[LIBRARYDIR] SUBMIT FEEDBACK PLEASE: Draft eBook legislation for review

Tue Apr 30 09:57:14 PDT 2024

________________________________
From: Carmi Parker <carmi.parker at wcls.org>
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2024 11:56 AM
Subject: Draft eBook legislation for review

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Dear Library Leadership Council Board Members:

LeighAnne Thompson (cc’d) are co-chairs of a working group of academic, public, and special librarians exploring Washington State legislation to address several issues with eBook contracts and licenses. We are requesting feedback now on the first draft (more details below), and the community college representatives on our working group suggested we make you aware of this effort. Would you be willing to share this information with your contacts in leadership or digital selection across the community and technical colleges and invite them to send feedback?

Please let me and LeighAnne know if you have any questions. Thank you for your help exploring this effort to improve access to digital resources for Washington residents!

Regards,

Carmi Parker

______________________________________________________

Greetings Community & Technical Colleges!

This email is for the librarians in CTC libraries that select ebooks or are responsible for digital content. A working group of academic, public, and special librarians was formed in Autumn 2023 to explore the possibility of legislation that would address several issues with eBook contracts and licenses, following the example of several other states including Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island among others. We are now seeking feedback on our first draft.  If we move forward with the legislation, we hope to submit it in the 2025 session.

(If you are already in the working group and are gathering feedback, thank you! You can ignore the rest of this email.)

The working group defined the following desirable outcomes for legislation:

  *   Digital books with print-like loan terms will cost schools and libraries about the price of the print equivalent.
  *   Licenses, contracts and terms of use may not rescind existing federal copyright limitations that serve readers or libraries.
  *   Non-disclosure clauses in digital content license contracts will be unenforceable.

The working group is requesting four things from interested parties:

Questions & concerns:

•         Please read the draft and companion documents and make sure you understand what we expect the legislation to accomplish on behalf of your library.

•         Share the legislation with stakeholders at your library. We may ask library leaders to reach out to their legislators in support of the legislation in the future.

•         Send us questions or concerns before May 15, 2024, the earlier the better.

•         Send us the names and email addresses of anyone at your organization who would like to receive status updates on the progress of the legislation.

Optional additional activity – marked-up copy of the draft with clauses prioritized

We would like to document how important different clauses are to different libraries so we will know what clauses are non-negotiable and which we may want to trim from the final draft. Please email the marked up copy before May 15.

•         Green for clauses that the legislation absolutely must include as far as your library is concerned

•         Yellow for clauses that are nice to have but that your library can live without

•         Red for clauses your library does not need

You will find attached:

  *   A summary of the bill’s goals and approach
  *   A clean copy of the draft bill.
  *   A copy of the draft bill with an explanatory annotation for each central clause.
  *   A license model review, which documents the most common license models we use and whether/how they would be impacted under the law

Please email Carmi Parker (carmi.parker at wcls.org<mailto:carmi.parker at wcls.org>) and LeighAnne Thompson (thompsol at seattleu.edu<mailto:thompsol at seattleu.edu>), the working group co-chair (cc’d) with any questions. Thanks!

Carmi Parker
Whatcom County Library System
ILS Administrator/Librarian
Administrative Services
+13603053629
Note: My incoming/outgoing email messages are subject to public disclosure requirements per RCW 42.56.
www.wcls.org<http://www.wcls.org>
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