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Next week, American Library Association leaders will meet with executives from three of the biggest publishing houses in the U.S. to discuss a circulation model for those publishers' e-books. This meeting was initiated by ALA. Keith Fiels, ALA executive director, said, “I want to assure you that the dialog will begin with us saying ‘you need to deal with libraries and you need to do this as soon as possible,’ then we can have a dialog  starting from there,” Fiels said. “I think for the membership, this is what’s keeping people awake at night.” Fiels's statement reflects a sense of urgency among libraries about our role in information provision and service to our constituents.

ACQWEB and ACQNET-L have been around for, in Internet terms, a long, long time. ACQNET's first post was about 21 years ago! ACQWEB dates back to 1994 and offered a directory of publishers and vendors, and other tools for library acquisitions. Both of these resources greatly facilitated communication among acquisitions librarians. The list put colleagues in touch with one another faster and more broadly than before email lists were in vogue. The website's collocation of job-specific information made it invaluable for one-off orders from distant parts of the world, or for rare and unusual books.

A week later, I'm still trying to process all the information that washed over me at the Charleston Conference.

In a nutshell, the first sale doctrine means that if a library in the United States buys a book, it may lend the book, give it away, or—at least according to federal law—resell it.

Libraries are in the business of sharing: We share with our patrons, we provide a nexus for researchers to share information and develop new ideas in tandem, and we share with other libraries’ patrons.

As the flagship institution for a large state university system, our library operates in an environment of scrutiny from university auditors and journalists alike. We have diligently imposed auditing controls to demonstrate we are responsible stewards of taxpayers’ money. If your library has implemented PDA, how comfortable are your accounting staff with the fact that the vendor—-and only the vendor—-has the capability of counting uses?

Banned Books

• Banned Books Online, by John Mark Ockerbloom

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