Research unveils restrictive eBook access is limiting the transformative potential of libraries, cutting off access to scientific knowledge, research, innovation, and opportunity for economic growth.

Public, academic and research libraries are continuously modernising to meet evolving community needs in a digital age.

eBooks should be central to this modernisation, offering remote access, expanding inclusive reading, and enabling borrowing anytime, anywhere. Yet libraries are obstructed from providing the equitable access to knowledge they are funded to deliver by unfair pricing, overly restrictive licences, refusal to license, and bundling practices.

Fixing the eBook Market: supporting innovation and growth is a literature review funded by Knowledge Rights 21, commissioned by CILIP and delivered by Inflect.

The report reviews the positive return on investment found by academic studies for all types of libraries. It evidences how eBooks are changing the ownership models and cost structure that our libraries face and considers how these impacts are affecting both the economics of libraries and their capacity to achieve their economic, social, and educational roles. It makes a series of recommendations including:

• Ensuring fair pricing and competition
• Reforming eLending rules
• Ending restrictive bundling practices
• Protecting libraries' preservation role
• A 'case for support' synthesises research from the literature review to create an accessible, compelling and evidence-backed advocacy document within a broader library context.

The report will be officially launched at a Parliamentary roundtable event on February 26.

The publication of the literature review and 'case for support' is the first step in the Unlocking eBooks project, which will look to garner widespread support for change - both politically and across the sector.

Download Literature Review and Case for Support

Join the webinar on 19 March