Obvious Diversion

A few weeks ago, I expressed some concern over the news that King County Library System in Washington State was distributing public domain works with privite DRM. It seemed rediculous to me that the public library would have people waiting their turn for items that already belong to the public. I’m happy to say that the King County Library responded. Here’s their email in it’s entirety (contact information removed for obvious reasons):

April 7, 2005

Christian Gloddy

Dear Mr. Gloddy:

Thank you for taking the time to write to the King County Library System. We value feedback and frank comments from our patrons, especially when it pertains to our materials or services. I am responding to your suggestion that KCLS offer access to digital versions of works in the public domain, rather than our current model of providing access to the titles offered through a vendor (such as OverDrive or Recorded Books).

For some time, the King County Library System wanted to offer e-books and digital audiobooks to its patrons, and now offers both audio and text versions, in a number of formats. The response to the audiobooks format has been very positive.

You suggest that KCLS simply link to Project Gutenberg, to provide patrons access to titles in the public domain, rather than using the digital rights management model. While KCLS does link to a number of websites through its home page, we make a distinction between offering access to a site (that may provide a service or product), and adding an item to our catalog. Not all of the titles in the Project Gutenberg collection would meet our selection criteria (including quality, reviews or reputation of the author) in terms of the quality of recording. In order to provide catalog access to titles in the Project Gutenberg collection, we would need to create catalog records that would link to the individual items in the Project Gutenberg collection, a staff-intensive activity.

A recent message from the Executive Director of Project Gutenberg described an ambitious project that involves creation of MARC records for titles currently in the PG collection, and titles that may be added to the collection. These MARC records are being created by librarians on a volunteer basis, and the plan is to release a CD of test records to libraries that are interested. We will follow the progress of this project and will consider adding links to these e-book MARC records.

Thank you, again, for taking the time to write. I hope that this answers your questions about this issue. Please feel free to contact me directly if you wish to discuss this further. I can be reached at (hidden for privacy reasons).

Sincerely,

Bruce Schauer
Associate Director
Collection Management Services

I consider the library system to be vital to a healthy democracy and a sense of equal opportunity for all and, as a result, I have a great deal of respect for the people who work at these institutions. The good part of the above letter is that if they weren’t aware of Project Gutenberg before, it looks like they have since taken the time to read about the opportunities available in the future. My thanks for Mr. Schauer for a reasoned and researched response.

I hope in the future they embrace an open solution for public domain works. Mr. Schauer cites the lack of resources, a constant and understandable problem for public libraries, as a current reason to not explore a partnership with Project Gutenberg, but it is exactly that lack of resources that should encourage them to embrace the quality free materials for use by their patrons. Having people wait their turn for something that belongs to them is an embarrassing sign that something is very wrong.

Hopefully it will be remedied in time.