IFLA Principles for Library eLending
Following the production of the IFLA Background Paper on eLending the IFLA Governing Board tasked the eLending Working Group with developing a set of principles that could guide library professionals as they grapple with the complicated process of negotiating eBook licenses with publishers and resellers.
The principles below are intended to help all library professionals seeking to provide downloadable eBook content to their users, and are broadly drafted to maintain relevance across IFLA’s 150 member countries.
Preamble
The rise of commercial dissemination of written content in digital form has imposed a new and challenging reality for libraries, publishers, authors and readers. Evolving and escalating changes in reader expectations fuelled by technological change are threatening traditional service delivery and business models.
Libraries are confronting the new reality where in many instances they are constrained from acquiring commercially available eBooks for their collections under acceptable terms and conditions due to the rights holders’ belief that they can control subsequent uses of digital works which are sold or licensed. The exhaustion of rights for digital content is an issue of increasing legal debate and uncertainty. Should the rightsholder interpretation prevail that they do control post-initial sale uses of digital content, the library’s traditional mission of ensuring societal access over time to written culture will be undermined. Faced with changing reader demands and an uncertain economic future, trade publishers and authors are exploring a variety of approaches to deliver their publications to the marketplace, including withholding sales to libraries where this is believed to undermine overall sales and royalties.
The IFLA Principles for eLending is based on the assumption that it is necessary for libraries and publishers/authors to negotiate a range of reasonable terms and conditions for the licensing of eBooks to libraries which allows them to fulfil their mission of guaranteeing access to knowledge and information for their communities. Successful negotiations will require solutions which do not unduly jeopardize the publisher’s and author’s financial viability. It is not acceptable that a publisher or author can restrict a library's ability to purchase/license otherwise commercially available eBooks for the library collection. The implementation of a library's collection development policy has to be in the library's control, and not in the control of publishers and authors.
Should publishers/authors persist in withholding the licensing or sale of eBooks to libraries, IFLA believes that publishers/authors should be required in legislation to make available eBooks to libraries under reasonable terms and conditions. In jurisdictions where there is government financial support for publishers and authors, there is an especially strong argument to be made that societal access to published works through libraries should be mandated by government.
Recognizing the widely varying technological capacity and eBook market development by country and region, it is understood that differing terms and conditions for eBook availability through libraries may be appropriate in different geographic regions but the underlying principles have international relevance.
Principles for the Licensing/Purchase and Use of eBooks in Libraries
1. Libraries should be able to license and/or purchase all commercially available eBooks under a variety of terms and conditions dependent upon the nature of the work and the rights provided to libraries and their users such as:
- Number of simultaneous users
- The period of time the library has the right to make the eBook available.
- The option of outright purchase with permanent availability1
- A limit on the total number of loans permitted
- Publication date and retail sales.2
2. Given a mutual respect for copyright on the part of libraries and rightsholders, any eBook licensing/purchase options offered to libraries must respect copyright limitations and exceptions available to libraries and their users in legislation including if applicable:
- The right to copy a portion of the work
- Reformat the work for preservation purposes if it is licensed or purchased for permanent access
- Provide an interlibrary loan copy3
- Re-format a work to enable print disabled access
Libraries should have the right to bypass a technological protection measure for the purpose of exercising any non-infringing purposes.
3. eBooks available from libraries should be usable on all commonly available eReading devices.4
4. Libraries and library users must be able to control the use of a user’s personal information including their library digital reading choices.
5. When publishers and/or authors and/or resellers withhold library access to eBooks, national legislation should require such access under reasonable terms and conditions.5
These Principles were endorsed by the IFLA Governing Board in February 2013, Revised April 2013.
1For long term preservation purposes, electronic files of commercially published work may be deposited with the agency or agencies specified in national legal deposit legislation.
2Publishers should not place an embargo on library licensing of new titles.
3Limits on interlibrary loan may include those mandated by national legislation and jurisprudence or negotiated limits such as the number of interlibrary loans of one title permitted annually or geographic limits on where the title is supplied when a publisher does not have the eBook market rights for the country where a requesting library is located.
4Usually, interoperability is dictated by eReader device manufacturers/distrbutors, and on occasion resellers, and not publishers. In some instances eReading device manufacturers/distributors also act as publishers.
5This requirement to ensure community access to all eBooks through libraries is clearly defensible in countries where there is government financial support for publishers and authors.
Última actualización: 10 Abril 2013