London, 24 May 2012.   HM the Queen launches online resource of all Queen Victoria’s Journals

Her Majesty The Queen today launched a unique online resource that makes available all the personal journals of Queen Victoria.  The Bodleian Libraries working in partnership with The Royal Archives and information company ProQuest, have for the first time ever, made the private records of one of the world’s most influential public figures available for the public to access at www.queenvictoriasjournals.org.

The journals, which span Victoria’s lifetime and consist of 141 volumes numbering over 43,000 pages, have never been published in their entirety and previously were only accessible by appointment at the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle. In addition to autograph diaries begun by the youthful Princess Victoria, there are edited versions from her later years, redacted and transcribed by the Queen’s daughter, Princess Beatrice.

Queen Victoria was a prolific writer and recorded her thoughts and experiences almost daily, starting with her first entry as a young girl of 13 and continuing until just weeks before her death in 1901. Her journals provide a fascinating insight into her life as Queen, giving an intimate first-person account of key events in her life and sixty-three years on the throne, from her coronation and her marriage to Prince Albert to the Diamond Jubilee of 1897.  The journals also trace important events in political and social history such as meetings with her Prime Ministers, The Great Exhibition and the Crimean and Boer Wars, shedding previously unrecorded moments of significance for world history.

Throughout her journals pride and passion for country are revealed:  ‘I really cannot say how proud I feel to be the Queen of such a Nation’ (28 June 1838). She writes about her travels across Britain detailing her views on the North-west, Black Country, Wales and Scotland, where on a visit to the Invertrossachs she writes: ‘The romance and wild loveliness … beloved Scotland the proudest, finest country in the world’ (2 Sept 1869).

The journals expose the challenges of duty, when she writes: ‘So much to do, so many boxes, letters, business…’(26 February 1862).  They also reveal the impact of world events when she reflects on the Franco-Prussian War: ‘I ended this dreadful year of bloody conflict in no cheerful mood’ (31 Dec 1870).

Finally, the journals give insight into many personal experiences showing an unexpectedly intimate side to Queen Victoria.  She writes of her early romance with Prince Albert:  ‘He clasped me in his arms, and we kissed each other again and again!’ (10 Feb 1840), and describes giving birth: ‘A boy was born, to great happiness to me.  Dr Snow administered ‘that blessed Chloroform’’ (the birth of Prince Leopold, 22 April 1853). Later in life she describes the loneliness of widowhood: ‘Here I sit lonely and desolate, who so need love and tenderness’ (10 March 1863).

All the journals are now available via this easy-to-use website and can be browsed and read online.  Pages from the journals can be searched by date or place of writing, and transcriptions of each page–searchable by keyword–are currently provided for the period up to 1840, with further releases planned throughout the Diamond Jubilee year. The site includes an interactive timeline and drawings by Queen Victoria, along with selections from her sketchbooks.  Finally, the site includes a number of essays about aspects of Queen Victoria’s life, authored by Sir Roy Strong, Laurence Goldman and Peter Ward-Jones among others.

Members of the public can also access the site to find out about key figures, events or places in history. In the year of our Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, users can even discover what Queen Victoria wrote about her own equivalent celebrations in 1897: ‘It was like a triumphal entry … one mass of beaming faces, and the cheers never ceased’ (21 June 1897).

The resource is available free of charge to all users in the United Kingdom and to the national libraries of Her Majesty’s Realms; users outside the UK can access the website until 30 June 2012. Thereafter, a specialized version for libraries will become available from ProQuest.

‘ProQuest is delighted to enable this content to be accessed and used by the global research community,’ said Rod Gauvin, ProQuest Senior Vice President. ‘It will be an important resource of primary materials for scholars worldwide, particularly those with an interest in British political and social history and those working on gender and autobiographical writing.’

Delivering the journals online has taken eight months to achieve and has involved specialist staff across the three organizations. Digital images of all journal volumes, along with drafts and illustrations, were created on site at the Royal Archives in the Round Tower at Windsor.

Dr. Sarah Thomas, Bodley’s Librarian said: ‘This initiative is a highly engaging and significant partnership across three organizations for the benefit of public and scholarly access to fascinating historical documents, and has been made possible with the support and generosity of Oxford benefactors The Polonsky Foundation and The Zvi and Ofra Meitar Family Fund.’

David Ryan, Assistant Keeper of the Royal Archives said: ‘The virtue of digital access is its ability to reveal the thoughts of Queen Victoria to millions around the world, providing them with a record of the important political and cultural events surrounding a monarch whose name defined an age.’

The Queen Victoria’s Journals website is mobile-compliant and can be viewed from all iPhones, Blackberry and Android phones.  The website is supported by a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/queenvictoriasjournals and Twitter at @QueenVictoriaRI .

This digital supplement addresses critical issues related to ebooks, e-content, digital literacy, and more! You can read it online or pick up one of a limited supply of print copies at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim—pick yours up at Office for Information Technology Policy programs and in the ALA Membership Pavilion.

What you’ll find inside:

• ALA´s Digital Content and Libraries Working Group cochairs, Sari Feldman and Robert Wolven,summarize recent ebook activities and suggest directions for the future.
• Deborah Caldwell-Stone from the Office for Intellectual Freedom focuses on ebook privacy and related ethical issues.
• James LaRue offers perspectives from a reader, librarian, publisher, writer, and bookseller on ebooks today and tomorrow.

You can read this supplement in the easy-to-use Zmag web browser format, or download it as a PDF for offline reading. Click here to get started.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – May 22, 2012 – Baker & Taylor, Inc., the world’s largest distributor of digital and physical books, today announced an important new release of its Axis 360 digital media platform that allows visually-impaired ebook users to have full access and use of their library’s digital collections.  

Baker & Taylor worked closely with the National Federation of the Blind on the development of the service, which makes Axis 360 fully compatible with the leading assistive screen-reader technologies that blind people use to interact with computers and the World Wide Web. These include: JAWS (Job Access with Speech), Window-Eyes, NVDA (non-visual desktop access) and System Access To Go. Now, the entire digital library experience – from discovering new titles to checking them out, to reading them on the Blio ereader – is available to blind patrons and students, and to others with reading disabilities, in accordance with the mandates of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“Libraries take their commitment to serve their entire community very seriously, and this new version of Axis 360 helps them meet the needs of all their customers,” said George Coe, President of Library & Education at Baker & Taylor. “We all know that interest in ebooks is surging.  Now, visually impaired individuals can share in the convenience, excitement and enjoyment of the newest and best digital content.”

Released last year by Baker & Taylor, Axis 360 is a digital media circulation and management platform used by many of the country’s top libraries. It allows patrons to discover digital content, which they can then read using the Blio ereader.

“We are thrilled that the Axis 360 platform will enable libraries to open up the world of ebooks to the blind  and to millions of other persons with reading disabilities throughout the United States,” said Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind.  “There is no other solution libraries can offer that provides the full spectrum of content choices, tools and ease of use for people who have difficulty reading or people who cannot read ordinary print.  We will certainly work with libraries across the country to ensure that they fully exploit what Axis 360 can uniquely offer.”

The new upgrade was implemented for all Axis 360 libraries and will serve as the platform for all ongoing development and future growth of Baker & Taylor’s digital media library.

Los Angeles, CA (May 17, 2012) SAGE and Simon Fraser University (SFU), a leader in the open access movement and a member of COPE (Compact for Open-access Publishing Equity), have announced a partnership designed to encourage social science and humanities faculty and students at SFU to publish in SAGE Open. Launched by SAGE in 2011, SAGE Open is the first peer-reviewed, broad-based “Gold” open access social science and humanities journal.

SFU will subsidize the author fee for 30 accepted papers to SAGE Open at a discounted rate. SAGE will reach out to SFU faculty and students to let them know about the subsidized fees. Additionally, SAGE will handle the billing and accounting for the fees so that it is a seamless transaction for SFU authors.

“SAGE has a built a strong reputation within the academy as a leader in innovative, sustainable, and high-quality scholarly publishing.  The SFU Library is thrilled to partner with SAGE as it ventures into the gold Open Access publishing arena,” said Charles Eckman, University Librarian and Dean of Library Services, Simon Fraser University.

SAGE Open has had more than 1,100 submissions across a range of disciplines, including education, psychology, political science, management and communication. Papers are from universities from around the globe and include authors from leading institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, NYU and others.

“We couldn’t be more pleased to be partnering with Simon Fraser, one of the world’s leading universities in the open access movement,” said Bob Howard, Executive Director, Journals Editorial. “Social science and humanities scholars are beginning to embrace open access journals as evidenced by the large number of submissions to SAGE Open. We feel this partnership sends a strong message to them, and not just at SFU, that open access is a viable outlet for their research output.”

###

SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. www.sagepublications.com

IPSWICH, Mass. — May 24, 2012 — Highlighting its growing audiobook collection, EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) released nine new audiobook collections in popular genres, providing public libraries with a quick and convenient way to begin or expand their audiobook offerings.

The latest audiobook sets focus on niche areas of fiction and nonfiction. These collections contain a wide variety of materials from best sellers such as the Hunger Games trilogy and Tina Fey’s Bossypants to recently digitized classics such as Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter. With these latest sets, particular attention was given to very specific areas of interest to public library patrons. 

These new audiobook collections are a prepackaged set of titles chosen specifically to fulfill niche areas of interest in a library’s readership. The nine new sets that are now available include:

Each collection was created by EBSCO’s collection development team of librarians based on popularity, positive recommendations and reviews from trade publications as well as usage statistics. These collections will be updated quarterly with the newest and best titles in each genre, and will be available on the website and for order via EBSCOhost Collection Manager^™.

eBooks on EBSCOhost

eBooks on EBSCOhost offers nearly 300,000 e-books and audiobooks. EBSCO proactively acquires new content in critical areas, based on the dynamic needs of libraries. EBSCO has recently released EBSCOhost Collection Manager, a collection management tool that allows users to search, browse, build lists, and order e-books quickly and easily. More information is available at: http://www.ebscohost.com/ebooks/manage-order/ecm.

About EBSCO Publishing

EBSCO Publishing is the producer of EBSCOhost^®, the world’s premier for-fee online research service, including full-text databases, subject indexes, point-of-care medical reference, historical digital archives, and e-books. The company provides more than 350 databases and nearly 300,000 e-books. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals and magazines from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). EBSCO is also the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service^™ (EDS), which provides each institution with a fast, single search box for its entire collection, offering deeper indexing and more full-text searching of journals and magazines than any other discovery service (www.ebscohost.com/discovery). For more information, visit the EBSCO Publishing Web site at: www.ebscohost.com, or contact: information@ebscohost.com.  EBSCO Publishing is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.

May 17, 2012 — Unglue.it (http://unglue.it) is launching on May 17, 2012, at noon EDT, with campaigns for books from five initial authors and publishers:

• Michael Laser, 6-321
• Joseph Nassise, Riverwatch
• Nancy Rawles, Love Like Gumbo
• Budding Reader, Cat and Rat
• Open Book Publishers, Oral Literature in Africa, by Ruth Finnegan.

Unglue.it is a crowdfunding site that lets book lovers pay authors and publishers to make their already-published books free to the world under a Creative Commons license.  If supporters pledge an amount chosen by the books’ rights holders before a given deadline, those books will be released as “unglued” ebook editions.  For these campaigns, deadlines vary from approximately two to six months, and funding goals from approximately $5,000 to $25,000.

As the popularity of ebooks skyrockets, readers have been discovering both their convenience and their disadvantages.  Proprietary formats and digital rights management (DRM) technology lock ebooks to specific devices and make it hard for people to keep reading their books as technology changes.  Many ebooks cannot even be lent by libraries.  Unglued ebooks solve these problems.  They have no DRM and can be copied and shared without infringing copyright due to the Creative Commons license. Instead of receiving royalties, rights holders are paid one licensing fee of their choosing in advance. Book lovers pledge toward this fee using the Unglue.it platform.

“The ebook technology revolution creates new opportunities for innovative markets that support readers, authors, publishers, and libraries,” said Eric Hellman, President of Gluejar Inc., the company behind Unglue.it. “Our crowdfunding platform will help the books that we love join the public commons for all to enjoy and cherish, while still respecting copyright and creators’ livelihoods.”

About Unglue.it: Unglue.it (http://unglue.it) is a crowdfunding platform which rewards rights holders for making their ebooks available to the world under a Creative Commons license (http://creativecommons.org).  Unglue.it runs campaigns for previously published books, allowing book lovers to pledge toward giving them to the world.  When rights holders’ target prices are reached, they receive funds in exchange for issuing an unglued ebook edition which can be freely read, copied, and shared, noncommercially, worldwide.  For more information, see http://unglue.it/press.

About Michael Laser: Michael Laser (http://michaellaser.com) writes novels for both adults and young people, as well as short stories and nonfiction.  His essays have been featured in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and Salon.com, among others.  He also runs a web site, http://News-Basics.com, where students and adults can get concise, impartial overviews of important news topics.

About Joseph Nassise: Joe Nassise (http://josephnassise.com/) is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the TEMPLAR CHRONICLES series, the JEREMIAH HUNT trilogy, and the just-launched GREAT UNDEAD WAR series.  His work has been nominated for both the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award, been praised by such literary masters as Clive Barker and Peter Straub, and been translated into half a dozen languages to date. He has written for both the comic and role-playing game industries and also served two terms as president of the Horror Writers Association, the world’s largest organization of professional horror and dark fantasy writers.

About Nancy Rawles: Nancy Rawles (http://www.nancyrawles.com) is the author of three critically-acclaimed and award-winning novels. Love Like Gumbo won an American Book Award for its portrayal of a lesbian daughter’s struggle for independence from her warm but suffocating family. Crawfish Dreams, the second in a series about the same family, was selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. Nancy’s third novel, My Jim, tells the story of the wife and children of Mark Twain’s famous slave character from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My Jim is the winner of the American Library Association’s Alex Award and the Legacy Award in Fiction from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. The Seattle Public Library chose My Jim as the 2009 selection for its popular program Seattle Reads, in which readers all over the city are encouraged to read and participate in discussions about one book.

About Budding Reader: Budding Reader is an independent publisher which aims to make learning to read easier and more fun for all children, especially struggling readers.  Their book sets incorporate research-based principles to build literacy skills.  In addition, Budding Reader partners with literacy nonprofits to donate one ebook to a child in need for every book sold. Their non-profit partner, Worldreader, distributes e-readers and e-books in the developing world.

About Open Book Publishers: Open Book is a scholarly publisher that is changing the nature of the traditional academic book.  Their authors range from early-career academics to eminent scholars, chosen on the basis of academic merit and public value through a rigorous peer review process.  As a signatory of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, they offer free online editions of their books to benefit scholars worldwide, while also selling traditional print and electronic copies.  This supports Open Book’s mission to spread educational materials to everyone, globally, not just to those who can afford it.

For more information please contact:
Eric Hellman
President, Gluejar Inc.
press@gluejar.com

Contact information for Rights Holders:

Michael Laser, michael@michaellaser.com
To arrange interviews, readings, appearances: Jennifer Prost Public Relations: jprostpr@comcast.net
For rights, permissions, etc.: Bill Lee, Lee-Steinberg Agency,: bill@Lee-Steinberg.com

Joseph Nassise, jnassise@gmail.com

Nancy Rawles, nrawles@earthlink.net

Melinda Thompson
President, Budding Reader
info@buddingreader.com

Rupert Gatt, Rupert.gatti@openbookpublishing.com
for Oral Literature in Africa by Ruth Finnegan
or
Alessandra Tosi, Managing Director,
a.tosi@openbookpublishers.com
40 Devonshire Road
Cambridge CB1 2BL
United Kingdom
+44 (0)1223 339929

NEW YORK, NY (April 23, 2012) – Due to rapidly changing technology and a greater demand for e-books, the tension in the book industry has grown as all parties attempt to rationalize accessibility and pricing. Now open in the United States, www.Bilbary.com – an internet-based, consumer e-book library and retail bookstore, addresses some of the issues that have risen, while also serving as a conduit for bringing books from authors to readers. Today, Bilbary is proud to announce two separate partnerships that will work toward building stronger relationships, as well as improved accessibility: Taylor & Francis and The State Library of Kansas.

“We are excited to work with both Taylor & Francis and The State Library of Kansas,” said Tim Coates, founder of Bilbary. “Our partnership with these organizations will help to both build our competitive platform and add to the services we will be able to offer.”

Taylor and Francis has made available 26,000 e-book titles for Bilbary to both sell and to rent.  Taylor & Francis is one of the world’s leading academic publishers and is renowned for its imprints which include Routledge, CRC Press and Psychology Press.

The State Library of Kansas has offered Bilbary the opportunity to sell e-books to its patrons as a first step in a program that is intended to provide subsidized lending of e-books in the US public library service.

Both of these programs are firsts for e-books and will be features of no other website in the world.

Taylor & Francis

Taylor & Francis, a leading international academic publisher, publishes 1,600 scholarly journals and over 3,700 new books each year. Bilbary’s agreement with Taylor & Francis will allow Bilbary to sell approximately 26,000 e-book titles, on top of its 340,000 current titles. All titles will reside in the Bilbary cloud, ensuring accessibility on any internet-connected device.

With this partnership, Bilbary will establish its first lending model, in which there will be a number of rental periods ranging from 30 to 360 days. The varying rental periods will provide students access to e-books and will eliminate worries regarding rental fines, due dates and whether the library or book store has sufficient copies stocked for university courses. Students will also be able to search for full texts, a first for a commercial consumer website.

“Bilbary’s goals align with ours at Taylor & Francis, in that we want our audience to have access to all we have to offer at any given time,” said Christoph Chesher, group sales director, Taylor & Francis.

State Library of Kansas

The State Library of Kansas, founded in 1855, serves the needs of state agencies, legislators and the general public. Bilbary’s agreement with The State Library of Kansas will allow Bilbary to open its doors to all Kansas library patrons. A link to Bilbary’s website will live on the Kansas State Library page, which patrons from anywhere in the United States will be able to click to purchase and download e-books.

“Our relationship with Bilbary demonstrates the sheer volume of reading that takes place in libraries and provides behavioral data to publishers, to which they have never had access to,” said Joanne Budler, state librarian, State Library of Kansas. “Essentially, we hope our relationship with Bilbary diminishes the intimidation publishers feel when interacting with libraries and improves mutual understanding to build a better dialogue – which will lead to improved understanding and policies.”

Another aspect of the overall agreement is that all commissions will be given back to Bilbary to be used for developmental purposes. Doing so will encourage Bilbary to create and improve its capabilities for Kansas patrons, while also paving the way for a rental model to be integrated. For consumers who tend to purchase books, Bilbary presents the perfect solution.

“This is only just the beginning for Bilbary,” said Coates. “In the next few months, we will expand the number of English and foreign language titles, become a forum for discussion of all things reading and bring the skills of the bookseller and librarian to the online arena. Stay tuned!”

For additional information on Bilbary, please visit www.Bilbary.com.

About Bilbary:

Bilbary is an internet-based, consumer e-book library and retail bookstore. Bilbary promotes and encourages reading by providing access to more than 340,000 e-books via e-readers, computers, tablets and smart phones for purchase or rental. Bilbary will soon offer promotions, shop windows and browsing and is intended to be a resource for readers, reading groups, libraries, schools, authors and all who enjoy and make use of books. (www.Bilbary.com)

About Taylor & Francis:

Building on two centuries’ experience, Taylor & Francis has grown rapidly over the last two decades to become a leading international academic publisher. With offices in London, and Abingdon in the UK, New York and Philadelphia in the USA, New Delhi in South Asia, and Singapore and Beijing in the Pacific Rim, the Taylor & Francis Group publishes more than 1,600 journals and around 3,700 new books each year, with a books backlist in excess of 20,000 specialist titles. Informing Academics from Past to Present.

About the State Library of Kansas:

The State Library of Kansas is located in the State Capitol building in Topeka. The library’s primary mission is to serve the residents of Kansas through direct service and through support of local libraries. Even before statehood, the State Library served as a depository of legal and historical documents and as a ready resource to the executive and legislative branches of Kansas government. Today, through the latest technology and access to online informational databases, the State Library of Kansas offers more information than ever to the residents of Kansas. Visit our website at www.kslib.info

May 8, 2012 – Palo Alto, CA, USA – Students in the United Kingdom who recently participated in ebrary’s Global Student E-book Survey reported a greater preference for digital over printed books and higher usage than their global counterparts in a similar survey conducted in 2011.  When asked how often they would choose e-books over printed books, 58% of UK students stated they would “very often” to “often” choose the digital version if it were available compared to 48% of global respondents.  Over 85% of UK students indicated they use e-books up to 10 hours per week and only 10% stated that they never use e-books.  In contrast, 52% of global participants indicated they use e-books up to 10 hours per week, and another 46% stated they never use e-books.  Approximately 5% of UK students indicated they use e-books more than 10 hours per week compared to 2% of global respondents.

Additionally, more than 80% of UK students reported that their awareness of digital resources is good to excellent, compared to less than 69% of global participants.  Only 6% of UK students indicated they did not know their libraries offered e-books compared to 38% of global respondents.

“ebrary was surprised to see such a variation of results in the UK,” said Kevin Sayar, President and General Manager of ebrary.  “One explanation may be that UK students know when they are using digital books, whereas other students may mistake e-books for online journals or other formats.  It is also possible that UK librarians are doing more in terms of e-book training and promotion.  We are excited to work with participating libraries, both in the UK and abroad, to dive deeply into this data and develop and share insights and best practices.”

The 2011 Global Student E-book Survey was created by librarians and sponsored by ebrary®, a ProQuest business.  More than 6,300 students from academic institutions around the world participated in the informal study.  Additional data will be forthcoming from approximately two hundred students who recently completed the survey in The University of Nottingham, University of Portsmouth, Coventry University, and The University of Central.

At the UCL E-Books and E-Content event on May 10, ebrary will be presenting the UK-specific results and how they compare to the 2011 findings as well as a similar survey conducted in 2008.  Anyone may register to receive a complimentary copy of the presentation by registering at http://www.tfaforms.com/243949. The 2011 Global Student E-book Survey and other studies sponsored by ebrary are available at http://site.ebrary.com/lib/surveys.

Here’s more from the press release:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (May 2, 2012): With the assistance of the National Federation of the Blind, four blind patrons of the Free Library of Philadelphia—Denice Brown, Karen Comorato, Patricia Grebloski, and Antoinette Whaley—have filed suit (case number: 12-2373) against the library because they cannot access one of the library’s programs for which they are eligible.  The Free Library of Philadelphia has instituted and announced plans to expand a program in which free NOOK Simple Touch e-readers, which are manufactured and sold by Barnes & Noble, are loaned to patrons over the age of fifty.  Unlike some other portable e-readers that use text-to-speech technology and/or Braille to allow blind people to read e-books, the NOOK devices are completely inaccessible to patrons who are blind.  The library’s conduct violates Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The Free Library of Philadelphia is aware that the NOOK devices are inaccessible, and library personnel have openly discouraged two of the blind plaintiffs from even attempting to check out one of the devices.  The library is also aware that it is violating federal laws, having been so advised by the United States Department of Education, which has issued both a Dear Colleague letter and a subsequent Frequently Asked Questions document regarding the obligation of federally funded institutions to purchase accessible e-book readers and other technologies.  The Free Library of Philadelphia does have a branch that lends Braille and audio books from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped of the Library of Congress to blind patrons, but the selection of books is limited, and books are not available in these formats until months or years after they are released to the general public.

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: “The technology to make e-books accessible exists, allowing blind people for the first time to buy or borrow books as soon as they are released.  Too many e-book platforms and devices, however, remain needlessly inaccessible to the blind and others who cannot read print.  Libraries have a legal obligation to serve their blind and print-disabled patrons and to not discriminate against them.  They should be purchasing accessible e-book reading devices and demanding that their vendors provide them, not perpetuating the status quo by purchasing inaccessible technology and needlessly relegating their blind and print-disabled patrons to separate and unequal service.  This is the standard to which we intend to hold the  Free Library of Philadelphia and any other public library that chooses to flout the law by purchasing and lending inaccessible e-book technology.”

Denice Brown, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said: “I am disappointed and frustrated that I cannot use the exciting new e-book technology being offered by my local library.  Worse yet, I was treated like a second-class citizen when I visited the library and asked about this new technology, with library personnel initially refusing even to help me fill out a form so that I could check out a NOOK Simple Touch.  I hope that the Free Library of Philadelphia, of which I am a patron, will make a strong commitment to accessibility and cease its discrimination against me and other blind patrons.”

For further illustration of this important issue, please view this video comparing the NOOK Simple Touch with accessible e-book technology.

The plaintiffs are represented in this matter by Daniel F. Goldstein, Sharon Krevor-Weisbaum, and Daniel A. Ross of the Baltimore firm Brown, Goldstein, and Levy; and David Rudovsky of the Philadelphia firm Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg.