Libraries in Illinois are subject to normalized, unfair licensing agreements to circulate e-books and other digital content.
That’s according to the directors of Bloomington and Normal’s public libraries, who said the agreements lead to high costs, long waitlists and limited offerings of that content.
“We have one [e-book] with 35 holds,” said John Fischer of Normal Public Library [NPL] in a WGLT Sound Ideas interview. “Patrons are sometimes waiting 84 weeks for a book.”
Fischer, along with Bloomington Public Library’s Jeanne Hamilton, said that’s one of many reasons he is pushing for passage of the Illinois Digital Library Protection Act in Springfield. It is co-sponsored by state Rep. Sharon Chung of Bloomington.
“Whoever is having a contract with these vendors, they’re charged sometimes four times the amount that a consumer would pay for an e-book,” he said. “So, we’re trying to protect tax dollars.”
The proposed legislation would ensure fair acquisition terms, restore digital equity, protect interlibrary sharing and safeguard patron privacy surrounding e-books.
Digital equity is an especially important part, Fischer said. In lowering the price of acquiring e-books, libraries would be able to shorten wait times and buy extra copies like they do for physical ones.
“With a digital book, it’s difficult for us to do that because of the pricing,” he said. “If we’re spending $20 or $25 on a physical book for the shelf, we could be spending $89 on an e-book.”
An e-book catch-22
Libraries seldom buy e-books, though, Fischer said. They are made available on leases because that is what vendors usually offer.
It makes multiple copies a hard pill to swallow.
“So, for a quick example…a Stephen King book, You Like It Darker,” he said.
“This one for e-audio for a 24 [month] lease is $129, and so it would be very difficult for a library or consumer really to justify spending that amount of money on something that’s only going to last them two years, and maybe only a few people could borrow…”
Comparatively, Fischer said physical audio books on CD cost more than actual books, since cost is designed to account for the extra production.
Hamilton said for e-books and physical audio books, consumers are able to get them much cheaper than a library is.
“So, for us it could probably be near that $90 mark. If a consumer were to go and buy a copy themselves, usually you’re seeing it’s like $15,” she said. “The publishers and the companies selling the e-books to the libraries are charging us much more than if a person was able to go and purchase that on their own.”
The situation is the opposite for physical books.
“Usually, libraries are getting that 40% discount on physical books, and so it’s just a very different model than what we’re seeing out there,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton said the new law would address this directly if approved.
“…I think that publishers are taking advantage of the fact that libraries are kind of stuck in the middle, that we have this patron demand and this high interest in e-books and that’s really hard for us to turn around and tell our patrons, ‘No, we’re not going to offer that…’” she said. “…and then the publishers are using that environment to then say here are the terms and you have to agree to those or not have e-books.”
This new model has led libraries to see rising costs for digital content, while it does not make up a majority of their circulation and checkouts.
Fischer said the budget of NPL is about $346,000 with about 58% used for the physical collection and 42% for digital content, including "e-books, even other things like audio books, and maybe some items that you can watch or listen to besides books,” he said.
“So, 20% of our circulation is on digital items, and we’re spending 42% of our budget on that.”
Hamilton said BPL has a bigger budget, slightly over $700,000, but the breakdown is exactly the same. She said 27% of their checkouts are digital content.
Demand for digital content
While digital content does not equal a majority of library circulations, Fischer said they still qualify the demand as high.
That’s because of the long wait times and the inability of libraries to quickly satisfy wait times.
“If we could offer 20 of Theo of Golden today… I think we have 18 holds on it, so those would be filled immediately," he said. "The demand would increase because we’re able to satisfy it, but each of those copies we lease for the next 24-months cost $89.99 so it’s difficult for us to justify that with the tax-funded administration of our budget."
Fischer said other items can be shopped for. DVDs, picture books and novels give them the flexibility to be responsible with budgets, but the price of e-books are set in stone.
“We struggle to meet the demand of our e-content and justify the amount of money that we put into that budget line,” he said.
Fischer said on top of just having additional choices for library content, digital content is important for a library to provide accessibility options to its residents.
“It could be someone who used to go to the library and can’t go anymore, so digital content for them is much more appealing,” he said. “It may be someone who maybe their eyesight has changed in the last couple years… but reading digital content is so much easier for them, so they can continue to read books that interest them, genres that interest them.”
Small and rural libraries also face issues providing digital content. With smaller budgets, they can’t keep up.
“So, if this is a library who maybe it has one parttime director and two parttime clerks that work the desk, their budget might be somewhere between $150-200,000 a year — total budget,” Fischer said. “How they’re able to even collect a smidge of these digital collections for their patrons is really difficult to imagine.”
The proposed bill to help protect libraries would offer every library to negotiate prices for e-books or even set system-wide contracts through the state.
“Libraries are public good, right, and we’re providing services to people that maybe can’t afford it or maybe if they are able to get it from the library, they can spend that money on something else, and so e-books are an important part of that as well,” Hamilton said. “Because if we don’t provide e-books, then where are those people going to go that can’t afford it?”
The proposed bill passed the Illinois House and now sits in the Senate, specifically the Assignments Committee. Other states are working on similar law, but no other has outright passed it.
In Connecticut, the state legislature passed a trigger clause where the law will go into effect once another state does so first.
