No library required: the free and easy backwaters of online content sharing

Twentieth-century libraries were funded to provide content to their communities legally, easily and free. In the twenty-first century, new online competitors supply home consumers, legally and illegally, with what libraries traditionally were best at providing to library users - free and easy conte...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Greenhill, Kathryn, Wiebrands, C.
Other Authors: Alyson Kosina
Format: Conference Paper
Published: VALA; Libraries, technology and the future 2012
Online Access:http://www.vala.org.au/vala2012-proceedings/vala2012-session-11-greenhill
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/19457
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author Greenhill, Kathryn
Wiebrands, C.
author2 Alyson Kosina
author_facet Alyson Kosina
Greenhill, Kathryn
Wiebrands, C.
author_sort Greenhill, Kathryn
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Twentieth-century libraries were funded to provide content to their communities legally, easily and free. In the twenty-first century, new online competitors supply home consumers, legally and illegally, with what libraries traditionally were best at providing to library users - free and easy content. This paper suggests that library staff arguing for the value of contemporary libraries should be aware of the quality, methods and material of "hidden competitors". Some "hidden competitors" discussed include "blackmarket" journal article sharing, BitTorrenting sites, online textbook-sharing sites, self-distributing artists, programs to strip Digital Rights Management from ebooks, Amazon's ebook distribution and fan fiction. Possible future models for both "hidden competitors" and libraries - and implications of these - are suggested.
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institution Curtin University Malaysia
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publishDate 2012
publisher VALA; Libraries, technology and the future
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-194572017-01-30T12:14:00Z No library required: the free and easy backwaters of online content sharing Greenhill, Kathryn Wiebrands, C. Alyson Kosina Twentieth-century libraries were funded to provide content to their communities legally, easily and free. In the twenty-first century, new online competitors supply home consumers, legally and illegally, with what libraries traditionally were best at providing to library users - free and easy content. This paper suggests that library staff arguing for the value of contemporary libraries should be aware of the quality, methods and material of "hidden competitors". Some "hidden competitors" discussed include "blackmarket" journal article sharing, BitTorrenting sites, online textbook-sharing sites, self-distributing artists, programs to strip Digital Rights Management from ebooks, Amazon's ebook distribution and fan fiction. Possible future models for both "hidden competitors" and libraries - and implications of these - are suggested. 2012 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/19457 http://www.vala.org.au/vala2012-proceedings/vala2012-session-11-greenhill VALA; Libraries, technology and the future fulltext
spellingShingle Greenhill, Kathryn
Wiebrands, C.
No library required: the free and easy backwaters of online content sharing
title No library required: the free and easy backwaters of online content sharing
title_full No library required: the free and easy backwaters of online content sharing
title_fullStr No library required: the free and easy backwaters of online content sharing
title_full_unstemmed No library required: the free and easy backwaters of online content sharing
title_short No library required: the free and easy backwaters of online content sharing
title_sort no library required: the free and easy backwaters of online content sharing
url http://www.vala.org.au/vala2012-proceedings/vala2012-session-11-greenhill
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/19457