Lots of talk about libraries and ebooks at yesterday’s Day of Dialog sessions, “Ebooks Set Free: Blio/Copia and Other Platforms,” and “Audiobooks, Music, and Movies: Content and Format Changes and Challenges.” In “Ebooks Set Free,” panelists including reps from Baker & Taylor (Blio) and Copia, as well as public librarians, Susan Caron, Toronto Public Library, and Christopher Platt, NYPL discussed the evolving ebook/library business model and the two related products these two companies bring to the table.

Copia is a ‘social e-reading experience,’ described as a “Goodreads on steroids, the platform offers shared reading lists, mosaic views of books, tag clouds instead of lists, and social networking which leverages the ‘friends’ you already have. Blio is an ereader application, a digital media store that offers a state of the art circulation platform, integrates with library catalogs, and a feature-rich design with full color pages. Blio also offers text to speech, at the click of a button, with a suite of voice that can be assigned to characters. Both are device-agnostic (a popular phrase yesterday) meaning they can work on any device from laptop to smart-phone.

So, where is all the content for the world of ereading? Librarians need to start talking to publishers. Not only do publishers have a perception that libraries are not good for their business, but a business model that can make everybody happy has not yet evolved. Publishers need to know what librarians want, they also need to be educated on the value of the library (to them and to the world).

The next program, “Audiobooks, Music, and Movies” touched on many of the same themes. Mainly, what will be the new business model for libraries offering downloads of everything including ebooks. The business models associated with downloads are for consumers, libraries have not been considered. Panelists urged librarians to develop a competitive strategy and to know the cost per circulation of each download/item.

On the flip side, librarians would like to see ease of use in products, products that patrons can actually use. One of the panelists (Steve Potash, Overdrive) reported that research his company had done showed that 75% of consumers download to a pc or notebook, tho smartphone usage is growing.

There also was a discussion of lending model vs. one time usage, and also potential revenue streams related to the option to buy books by clicking from the library’s site.

Again, this panel concluded that publishers are looking to librarians for guidance…librarians need to engage with publishers. Potash noted that Overdrive research showed that American public libraries had nearly 1.5 billion visitors last year and that libraries need to leverage that power, by telling vendors and publishers how they want things to work, proposing business models and price points.