Good things from Essex

[undyingking]

Essex County Library makes available free on its website a load of online reference works, including an OED subscription. Plus a bunch of free ebooks you can download. You just have to join the library.

"But what good is that to me, I don't live in Essex!" you exclaim. (Unless you're sielis or waistcoatmark.)

Well, you don't have to -- you can join it from any UK postal address. It looks like you do have to physically visit one of the libraries to turn your e-membership into a shiny library card, but all the same that's pretty good I think. Three cheers for Essex!

Comments

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

I believe Oxfordshire libraries offer a reference service including the OED too - but I think Essex's e-books trump that!

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Boulder has lots of similar stuff which I guess I can access after I leave. I guess many people will build up a set of such accesses as they move around, so libraries might end up supporting a lot more users than actually walk through the doors.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, and of course apart from a bit of bandwidth it's no real skin off their back to do so.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

But I wonder whethe the special status that libraries have under copyright etc laws will be called into question by such behaviour. Buying one OED subscription to cover everyone who walks in and consults it is one thing, buying one to cover the whole Interweb is rather different.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

The Boulder e-books have to be checked out, and a throttling limit is applied according to the number of licences they have. Not sure how that would work for reference works though.

[metame.livejournal.com]

This is the issue that initially occurred to me (almost like I worked for OUP's Rights dept once). There's something quite alarming about having sold a subscription that becomes available to anyone. Exactly the sort of reason why everyone was a bit worried about how these new-fangled online business models were going to work.