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How can we make electronic lending better for libraries?
I got an audiobook to play on my MP3 player today, and it was a chore and a half with around 5 hours worth of upgrades. I could write a post about the procedure, but that's been done.
Brad Colbow's comic pretty much sums up the DRM problem best, I think. Getting DRM-protected content sucks, but libraries often have such systems in place to allow lending. I hate DRM, but I like my library, and I really like the idea of libraries being able to lend electronic content in a way that makes sense.
What I want to know is "what we are doing about it?" I know plenty of folk interested in open technology/culture... do any of you know of alternative software available to libraries? Resources they could use that would be more awesome and still enable lending?
(Related reading: Across the Digital Divide talks about why the whole "print is dead" thing leaves a lot of people in the dust. If you think about it in that context, making it easier to lend electronic resources in the future could be a bigger deal than you'd think.)
Usually I see people recommend you donate to the EFF or somesuch. And that's a good idea in general, but... I mean, I know I'd like to just have a world that was DRM-free. But apparently this is not a solution that works for my library, or more to the point it's not a solution that works for the places where my library obtains content. I want DRM to be dead, but I also would like to be able to borrow electronic resources a little sooner than never, thanks. Surely there are folk out there who are willing to sideline the ideology for now and just try to make something that's actually good?
So... what *are* we doing to make it easier for libraries to lend us electronic stuff?
Brad Colbow's comic pretty much sums up the DRM problem best, I think. Getting DRM-protected content sucks, but libraries often have such systems in place to allow lending. I hate DRM, but I like my library, and I really like the idea of libraries being able to lend electronic content in a way that makes sense.
What I want to know is "what we are doing about it?" I know plenty of folk interested in open technology/culture... do any of you know of alternative software available to libraries? Resources they could use that would be more awesome and still enable lending?
(Related reading: Across the Digital Divide talks about why the whole "print is dead" thing leaves a lot of people in the dust. If you think about it in that context, making it easier to lend electronic resources in the future could be a bigger deal than you'd think.)
Usually I see people recommend you donate to the EFF or somesuch. And that's a good idea in general, but... I mean, I know I'd like to just have a world that was DRM-free. But apparently this is not a solution that works for my library, or more to the point it's not a solution that works for the places where my library obtains content. I want DRM to be dead, but I also would like to be able to borrow electronic resources a little sooner than never, thanks. Surely there are folk out there who are willing to sideline the ideology for now and just try to make something that's actually good?
So... what *are* we doing to make it easier for libraries to lend us electronic stuff?
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Until this contract, in my nearly twenty years of doing tech stuff professionally, I've *never* had the experience of having the Business Customer being the one to supply me with the correct and relevant vendor support documentation for an issue they're having, or something they're thinking about in relation to the application suite. Now I have, repeatedly. That's Librarians.
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