ATG News You Need to Start the Week – 1/25/21

Amazon.com and ‘Big Five’ publishers accused of ebook price-fixing

According to The Guardian “Amazon.com and the “Big Five” publishers – Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster – have been accused of colluding to fix ebook prices, in a class action filed by the law firm that successfully sued Apple and the Big Five on the same charge 10 years ago.
The lawsuit, filed in district court in New York on Thursday by Seattle firm Hagens Berman, on behalf of consumers in several US states, names the retail giant as the sole defendant but labels the publishers “co-conspirators…”.

Library Futures Institute Launches; Coalition Includes EveryLibrary, Internet Archive, PublicKnowledge, Readers First, and SPARC, and Others

infoDOCKET reports that “Library Futures Institute, a new 501(c)(3) focused on equitable access to knowledge, launched this week with a social media campaign celebrating a technology-positive future for libraries… Through advocacy, grant making, education, and community, the organization will respond to 21st century needs, operate at the speed of change, and level the playing field between publishers and the public…”

ACRL Membership Funding for BIPOC Library Workers

ACRL Insider reports that “the ACRL Board of Directors has approved funds to support up to 50 memberships for ALA and ACRL (a value of over $200 per membership) for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) library workers, especially those who serve underrepresented populations…”

Six Newly Released Ebooks (Public Domain Titles) Now Available From Standard Ebooks

Also according to infoDOCKET, The Standard Ebooks project has just released six pubic domain titles. The project “is a volunteer driven, not-for-profit effort to produce a collection of high quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public domain ebooks that meet or exceed the quality of commercially produced ebooks…”

Report: “University of Minnesota Music Library Seeks to Diversify Its Collection”

Citing a story in The Minnesota Daily infoDOCKET also reports that after assisting a University of Minnesota alum in locating an obscure piece by a Mexican composer “University music librarian Jessica Abbazio has made it her mission to diversify the University’s Music Library, an immense task but one she has taken to heart. The physical collection houses over 100,000 items, including music scores, recordings, books and CDs. Abbazio estimates 85% of the collection is from a white or European repertoire…”

New OCLC Research Report on Transforming Metadata into Linked Data

OCLC Research reports that “Transforming Metadata into Linked Data to Improve Digital Collection Discoverability, an OCLC Research Report, shares the findings from the CONTENTdm Linked Data Pilot project. In this pilot project, OCLC partnered with institutions that manage their digital collections with OCLC’s CONTENTdm service to investigate methods for—and the feasibility of—transforming metadata into linked data to improve the discoverability and management of digitized cultural materials and their descriptions…”

MORE LIBRARY AND PUBLISHING NEWS FROM A VARIETY OF SOURCES

• Collaboration Across Campus: Open Monograph Insights From a Library And ‘Old’ University Press Partnership (via Insights)
• SAGE Articles Will Be Indexed on scite for Better Research Discoverability
• NBCC Awards Finalists Announced
• OpenAI and Microsoft Work to Balance Open Ideals With Complex Realities
• Soutron Global refreshes COVID-19 financial support package for 2021 with PRP
• TLC wins dual Modern Library Award honors
• Mitinet Library Services Receives Gold Award in 2021 Modern Library Awards from LibraryWorks
• Print Unit Sales Soar in Mid-January
• Audible changes their terms for audiobook returns and royalties