I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the Great Audiobook Debate. It sounds like a wrestling match in the book club, and honestly, it sometimes feels like one. You know the scene: you're excited to discuss a new book, and you mention, "Oh, I listened to the audiobook," only to have someone reply, "So, you didn't actually read it?" Cue the eye-roll.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the promise of the digital library became clearer than ever. As physical doors closed, e-books offered a vital lifeline, foregrounding the incredible potential of on-demand access to information and culture. Yet this moment of digital promise also cast a harsh light on the dysfunctional infrastructure, predatory business models, and outdated legal frameworks that govern the lending of digital content.

The UKSG Insights article ‘Interlibrary loans, subscriptions and copyright in the UK academic library sector’ by my White Rose comrade, from University of Sheffield, Andrew Johnson, is an excellent summary of the current ILL situation, considering legal exceptions and some of the legislative grey areas that exist within the ecosystem. I would encourage everyone to read it, as an educational and insightful explainer of complicated issues.

It's been a tough old year. Ditching out of 7 R&P deals at once naturally brings with it a whole host of stressful situations to navigate. Through all of this, an absolutely excellent piece of work (that I am very proud we achieved) underpinned a huge amount of our strategic thinking and decision making. Prior to any budget cuts, the decision had already been made that we in the Library should work with external colleagues to co-create a…

I posted on Linkedin a while ago about my overall views on EBA schemes. particularly in relation to DDA (or PDA) alternatives. I waffled on and ran out of words, happily now that I've set this blog up that is no longer an issues. So here is a post on all things EBA and DDA, happy reading. What is an EBA?

Brethren, arise, arise! Strike for your lives and liberties. Now is the day and the hour. Let every slave throughout the land do this, and the days of slavery are numbered. You…

Everyone has an imaginary ideal acquisitions workflow, right...right? If you don't have your own, you can use mine. To explain, this is an acquisitions model that would fairly balance the need of Libraries to be selective and judicious in allocating their limited budgets to resources, whilst also accommodating the need for Publishers and Aggregators to make profits. This is not inherently a cost saving model, more of a cost reallocation model allowing Universities to direct their spend in a more strategic way…

We all know that e-book licenses can be intentionally complex and confusing. The difficulty often lies in choosing between licenses that seem similar on the surface. For that reason, understanding …