E-books Denmark Erik Thorlund Jepsen

Setting Inhabitants km2 98 municipalities GNP pr. capita €

Setting - Libraries 2 National libraries, Legal deposit (incl. Internet) Danish Agency for Culture (national authority for public and national libraries) 98 municipal libraries (app. 500 service points – incl. 176 ‘open’ libraries) 6 ’Regional’ Libraries (superstructure – materials) (national funding 9 mio. €) Union Catalogue ‘Danbib’, ‘Bibliotek.dk’, ILL – Netpunkt.dk (professional interface), National transportation system… All holdings + internet publications available through libraries are catalogued in Danbib and mediated in Bibliotek.dk. National Bibliography: Copy cataloguing + Value-adding through ‘library cataloguing’ (subject metadata, annotations), paid by municipalities.

Legislation – Public Libraries Danish Library Act, 2000 § 1. The objective of the public libraries is to promote information, education and cultural activity by making available books, periodicals, talking books and other suitable material, such as recorded music and electronic information resources, including Internet and multimedia. (2) The public libraries must endeavour to make available videos. (3) The public libraries promote municipal and government information and information about society in general. § 2. The objective of the public libraries shall be achieved by Observing quality, comprehensiveness and topicality in the choice of materials to be made available. These criteria alone must be the decisive factors and not any religious, moral or political views which might be expressed in the material.

DDB – The Danish Digital Library launch State and municipalities unite – Yet freedom of choice for libraries Integrated acces/federal search to relevant material Open source and SOA National solutions on infrastructure, licensing, e-books and webservices Local priorities and presentations, local profile in library space and programme Central purchasing body – as goes for services (from Danish Library Center)

The Danish Library Concept

(The E-shelf) / project > Consortium of Regional libraries, Frederiksberg, København, Aarhus, Netlydbog.dk, The Danish Libary Center (DBC), Publizon, Danish Publishers and Litteratursiden.dk - Supported (initially) by The Danish Agency for Culture Download and streaming (+ translations + audio books) 2300 titles 2,5 euro per loan + declining along with increases in volume Maximum number of loans per user per month (differing among municipalities) Users choice (= no local selection!) Embeddable in library CMS Further development includes experiments with backlists

Breakdown In october 2012 negotiations between large publishers (Gyldendal a.o.) and E-reolen broke down Libraries: Unacceptable business model – pricing + Queuing Publishers: Libraries cannibalize the market + pricing

E-bib.dk Consortium of largest publishers Launch copies of each title + Queuing Pricing unknown ILL unknown Local selection Probably embeddable in library CMS Regional libraries will try to experiment with the model – ILL in region + max. prices

Future perspectives The market must find its conditions: Libraries acting as ‘economic men’ DDB as purchaser – national license bureau Further experimentation with business models Simulating the physical world vs. acting in the digital world I don’t believe in a solution related to ‘public lending rights’ in DK. In DK this is a support of cultural production.

Thank you