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The controversy surrounding the Publishers Association's guidelines on e-book lending, which recommend that users go to a library to borrow a digital title, shows no signs of abating with the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals the latest library body to accuse it of being "restrictive" for library users. But the Booksellers Association has backed the PA's move.
The PA's guidelines, which it stresses form a baseline view that publishers can deviate from as they see fit, have split opinion among librarians, publishers and retailers since they were unveiled last week. Booksellers Association c.e.o. Tim Godfray said: "The balance [between selling and lending] seems to be very much out of kilter," he said.
Godfray told The Bookseller: "The BA believes passionately in the importance of public libraries. But libraries have to recognise that if e-book lending were without controls, it would pose an extremely potent threat to the retail market, to publishers and authors.
"If bookshops are substantially undermined by e-book lending without fair controls, then they may well go out of business, which will not be in the interests of the libraries and communities they serve."
However, Annie Mauger, CILIP chief executive, said: "This is a restrictive move for library users in the digital age. Libraries are working so hard to ensure ease of access through all media to their services and to books and the geographical restrictions on e-books are not good for the development of digital access to libraries. The best way to solve this is to keep talking."
The PA's stance was originally outlined by Faber c.e.o. Stephen Page at the CILIP Public Library Authorities conference in Leeds on 21st October. He told delegates that all the major trade houses had agreed a baseline position through the PA placing restrictions on library e-lending. This had been agreed, Page continued, because some libraries had overstepped their agreements on library lending. However, Page's speech led to strong concerns among librarians being aired on theBookseller.com. PA chief executive Richard Mollet released a statement that said: "Selling and lending have to be able to co-exist with neither duly harming the other. "The position is a stepping-off point, a baseline from which publishers could, and no doubt would, develop their own arrangements with aggregators and libraries," Mollet added
However, comment among library staff continued on the online public library forum LIS-PUB-LIBS. One stock and systems manager wrote: "[Piracy] is the real issue the publishers have to face. Libraries loaning e-books via a simple quick service will actually decrease piracy."
Library consultant John Dolan said there were "kaleidoscopic ways" in which the web was changing distribution and the contact between creator and audience. He said: "There's a different future ahead—both print and digital—and it needs to be shared. For libraries, if we don't design that future, others will."