From the Director's Chair

From the Director -- November 2019

PLEASE READ BELOW AND ANSWER OUR BRIEF SURVEY. THANK YOU!

Important notice to Summit Library patrons who use our eLibraryNJ eBook service:
Beginning November 1st Macmillan Publishers and their many subsidiaries including Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Henry Holt, St. Martin’s Press and others, will allow libraries to purchase only one copy of each new eBook title for the first eight weeks after a book is released. After that time, libraries can then license access to additional copies for about $60 per copy for a term of two years or 52 lends, whichever comes first. This limitation applies to all libraries or groups of libraries no matter the size. Since the Summit Library is a member of the eLibraryNJ consortium, the entire consortium counts as a single library in Macmillan’s definition and would therefore only be entitled to a single copy for the entire consortium. The eLibraryNJ consortium consists of 37 independent libraries, the 32 libraries that are members of the Libraries of Middlesex County Consortium (LMxAC) and the 10 branches of the Mercer County Library System. Macmillan’s embargo would therefore have 79 New Jersey libraries sharing one eBook copy of each title for the first eight weeks after publication.
Macmillan’s CEO John Sargent explained his thinking in a memo to authors, illustrators and agents on July 25th by saying that “library lending was cannibalizing sales” and library “marketing…” is actively turning “purchasers in to borrowers… For Macmillan,