An Essay by Michael Atwood and John Wilkin

Last year, John Wilkin shared his essay Lyrasis in a Landscape of Radical Interdependence where he discussed the interdependence of libraries, archives and museums, and how Lyrasis is uniquely positioned to provide the connective tissue between them. He also laid out three key areas of internal focus for the future of Lyrasis: Content and Scholarly CommunicationsHosting and Open Source Software Support, and — its newest division — Ebooks and Community Engagement. In a follow-up essay, John expanded on the complexity of providing meaningful offerings to libraries given that the marketplace “did not need one more competing ebook vendor, and that displacing existing vendors was at best a foolish goal.” With this in mind, the ebook challenges faced by libraries highlighted in John’s first essay still exist today:

“Ebooks and the ebook marketplace present a challenge for many of our libraries, whether because of a cacophony of reading and discovery services or because Open Access ebooks are rarely integrated into the mainstream of acquisition, preservation and discovery environments.”

In 2021, with the ebook and ebook marketplace challenges in full view, Lyrasis started The Palace Project, in partnership with DPLA and a generous grant from the Knight Foundation. Later that same year, Lyrasis acquired BiblioLabs and its community engagement platform and services. The synergy of services, technologies and solutions for the two groups’ library communities came together a little over a year ago with the formal creation of the Ebooks and Community Engagement division — a team focused on providing libraries with solutions and alternatives in this space via a multifaceted approach to ebooks and econtent.

We believe, for libraries to secure control over their ebook future, they must adopt a multifaceted strategy — from negotiating innovative licensing terms with traditional publishers to directly sourcing content from local communities. However, the primary obstacle to this approach has been the absence of a platform capable of supporting these new models. For instance, while publishers may be open to offering library-friendly licensing options, they are often limited by the capabilities of existing library platforms. At the same time, publishers typically lack the resources to develop, maintain and distribute their own platforms, and when every solution begins with “first, build an ebook reader,” potential innovations are stifled before they can be realized. It became evident years ago that a foundational, library-owned ebook platform was essential to address both operational and patron-facing challenges…

Read the rest of this essay on Lyrasis Now