It was a seismic move in the struggle to create a workable ebook access model for the users of America’s libraries. It was engineered by Joanne (Jo) Budler, the Kansas State Librarian, when she realized that an initial proposal in 2010 to renew the Kansas State Library (KSL) contract with OverDrive would increase administrative costs by some 700 percent over the next few years, as the state ebook deal was being restructured. Despite the risk of disrupting and even losing access to ebooks for the users of Kansas libraries, Budler rejected more than one proposal from OverDrive for a new contract until a year ago when she won the right to transfer titles from OverDrive to a new platform. The dispute set off a long (and public) national examination of library service agreements.

Budler worked closely with Kansas Deputy Attorney General Jeff Chanay, whose expertise helped KSL struggle through the complex copyright and ownership issues built into the original state ebook platform contract.

Budler’s ongoing efforts in the ebook battles and her work as chair of the Ebook Task Force of the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA), in addition to her significant local contributions in the state of Kansas, made clear a picture of Budler as an extremely effective library leader and LJ Editors’ choice for Librarian of the Year 2013.

Seeking a new model

“It was a new process to us and that made it take a little longer as we learned. But when you have to do something, you do it,” says Budler.

“The Kansas librarians really supported our work on the ­ebook question. They didn’t like the fact that we had to stop providing service to our customers. The numbers are not high, but the people who use the ebook service use it a lot. We communicated very clearly with the librarians and their patrons,” Budler says.

“We had a support line here. People would call in and complain,” Budler continues. “When we explained it to them, they all agreed that we should give up our contract and not pay the enormous increases in fees.”

Overcoming their concerns, the librarians of Kansas supported Budler as she sought and found new suppliers to provide ebook access for the people of Kansas. They realized the issues inherent in sourcing ebooks from a single supplier.

Diligently and with an eye toward the long-term, Budler initiated an effort that would move the nation’s libraries toward a broader conversation and new models for ebook access. KSL now works with several ebook suppliers, including 3M, Freading, Baker & Taylor, and Bilbary.

“We haven’t settled on any one model for ebooks. We know now that we don’t want to be locked into just one vendor.”

“The secret of negotiation is to look for a gain-gain for everybody, to not being so rigid, and to not beating up anybody. The vendors are really doing a service for us,” Budler told a well-attended COSLA session entitled “Do I Own These ­Ebooks or Not?” last January.

A key issue had been what would happen to the ebooks the library had licensed were the library to cancel its contract with a given vendor? Budler fought to be able to transfer the titles that the library had paid to license to another platform (3M’s) rather than lose access to the titles (and also waste the state’s financial investment in the content). Capitalizing on Budler’s effort in a way that resulted in a large benefit to all libraries, 3M made it a part of its standard contract that libraries could move their titles to another platform.

And Budler’s advocacy was an inspiring example of a librarian standing up for the rights of her instituion while clearly raising the awareness of many librarians about the need to think carefully about any contracts they sign for ebooks.

GUBERNATORIAL SUPPORT Budler (r.) and Kansas First Lady Mary Brownback (l.), shown here in Topeka’s State Library Building, work together on literacy projects. Photo by Blaine Fisher/Getty Images

Building awareness

In October, frustrated by the lack of response from its letters to publishers asking to allow transfer of ebook content to a new vendor, KSL turned to social networking, a Facebook page, to broadcast its complaints against the unfair restrictions the Big Six publishers are placing on ebooks in libraries and the titles affected. The six large publishing firms—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Random House, and Penguin Group, though the latter two recently announced a merger, pending regulatory approval—publish most American best sellers.

A press release highlighting KSL’s effort to show that librarians and library users alike are aware of the gaps on their digital shelves—and of the publishers responsible—was featured in a story in the Wichita Eagle and other newspapers.

“Writing to publishers and complaining to each other about the publisher/library ebook conflict wasn’t enough,” Budler said in a statement to the paper. “We needed a social media platform of our own to come together with the public and really take a look at the content not available.”

KSL wanted to make publishers more accountable for unfair ebook lending practices and build an audience that includes library users (who are also avid ebook buyers) large enough to make an impact on the ebook lending landscape. The community page has a long way to go before it has this kind of broad impact, but between KSL’s efforts and other similar social media efforts like it, vastly more readers are becoming aware of the root causes of their frustrations, helping to focus their attention and comments.

KSL was particularly concerned, for example, about popular new books, The Casual Vacancy, by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, and Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise—both buoyed by demand surrounding recent current events, yet both currently unavailable to libraries. KSL also listed a number of ebooks, that while available, were priced as high as $85, manyfold what a consumer would likely pay.

Meanwhile, Budler has also led KSL this year into a pioneering partnership spearheaded by the large Califa library network in California, adding financial support to a deal with the Smashwords self-publishing platform to give libraries unprecedented access to self-published titles and works by local authors.

The Califa project is modeled after the Douglas County model in which libraries truly own their ebooks and house them on library servers.

Most agree that though the struggle is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, Budler and KSL have moved American libraries toward greater clarity about the issues surrounding ­ebook licensing and toward a more robust—if currently volatile—ebook marketplace for libraries.

A HELPING HAND Kansas Deputy Attorney General Jeff Chanay (l.)
backed Budler’s reasoning about ebook contracts.
Photo by Blaine Fisher/Getty Images

The governor supports KSL

Mark Parkinson, the Kansas governor who originally hired Budler in March 2010, decided not to run again. She was instead reappointed by Gov. Sam Brownback and serves at his pleasure and enjoys working well with him and his wife, Mary.

“Governor Brownback is very supportive. He understands the value of reading, and having Kansas children reading at the age-appropriate levels is one of his goals,” says Budler. “He initiated a summer reading program, Read Kansas, last year. He gave a party at the governor’s residence for the 20 children who had read the most and their families. Our first lady, Mary Brownback, developed a book festival last year and will do another next year at the Capitol.” KSL names Notable Books, and those awards are given out to authors at the book festival.

KSL’s key services

KSL provides on-site and online information services for state and local governments, other state agencies, state legislators and legislative staff, local libraries of all types, and, of course, Kansas citizens, residents, and visitors.

There is a good deal of underemployment in Kansas, where the main industries are agriculture and higher education; the library subscribes to Learning Express and works with other state agencies to be sure it is effectively used for education and employment training. KSL supplies almost all of the electronic resources and a statewide database to the libraries using federal Library Services & Technology Act funding and some state money to provide them. KSL also maintains a union catalog and a talking books service in Emporia.

KSL, like all government agencies, has faced big challenges in recent years. Its budget has been cut about 38 percent in the last five years, meaning the loss of some positions and forcing Budler and her staff to reassess every service they provide. Last year, that assessment meant a close look at the Kansas statutes to be precise about what KSL is required to do and how that compares with what Budler and the staff feel the state needs from KSL. For example, KSL ran a Center for the Book with a mission “to stimulate public interest in the educational and cultural role of the book,” but was forced to cut back deeply on it.

According to Budler, KSL’s statewide services are crucial and provide “a great equalizer to make certain everybody gets the same, basically good, library service.”

Another crucially important factor is KSL’s “incredibly talented reference librarians” and their service to the legislature and state government. It is very heavily used by legislators when they are in session and by other state government agencies year-round. KSL maintains a mobile unit on the lawn of the Capitol to make reference service convenient for elected officials as well.

BUDLER’S TEAM Valuable assistance all around for Budler (front, center). Top from left to right: Jeff Hixon, Rhonda Machlan, Alan Pine, Lianne Flax, Patti Peterson. Stairs from top to bottom: Rita Troxel, Vicky Wolf, Cindy Roupe, Bill Sowers. Bottom from left to right: Tom Roth, Candace LeDuc, Shannon Roy, Sarah Tenfelde-Dubois, Megan Schulz, Brian Herder, Barbara Turner. Photo by Blaine Fisher/Getty Images

The local touch

In 2004, Budler was appointed state librarian of Ohio and served as deputy state librarian of Michigan for four years prior to that. She is proud of several years she spent as a librarian in the Legislative Reference Library in Nebraska serving members of that unique unicameral legislature.

Budler went on to serve as director of network services at NEBASE, Nebraska’s regional OCLC network at the time.

“I’m sorry those OCLC regional networks are gone,” she says. “We did a lot of local and regional training. That kind of thing is difficult for a nationwide organization like OCLC. They don’t have that local touch.”

Budler’s belief in the need for smaller regional library systems came from the Nebraska experience.

“At some levels, state libraries have the same problem,” she says. “We can’t handle the local needs of local communities; we can do the statewide stuff, and we do that well. The regionals, of which there are a half dozen in Kansas, do the more personalized, local things. In Kansas, our regionals do a lot of training and technical support. They help our libraries with their E-rate processes and technical planning.”

There are more than 350 libraries in Kansas, most of them very small. “I’m impressed by the dedication of these library workers; it is more important than money support. I can’t say enough about the good people who staff our libraries. I feel that way about library workers in every state. I love the passion they all bring to their work,” Budler says.

From 1984 until 1987, Budler worked at the Bennett-­Martin Public Library in Lincoln, NE, first as a cataloger, then as curator of the library’s Heritage Room.

Moving to “the country”

Budler grew up in the Richmond Hill neighborhood of New York City’s Borough of Queens. She went on to undergraduate studies at Syracuse University, NY.

“I felt like I was in the country, but after that I went to Iowa City, and I really felt I was in heaven; it was so rural and ­beautiful.”

At the University of Iowa, she studied writing under Donald Justice, the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet. Budler chose the poetry track in the university’s Writing Workshop. She writes poems infrequently now. “I don’t send them out to get published anymore, but I did once. It was fun when I was published in a collection of women’s poetry. I write because I like to,” Budler says.

“I knew I didn’t want to teach, so I went on to the LIS program at Iowa,” Budler remembers.

The value of collaboration

To Budler, collaboration is one of the traditional core values of librarianship that always remains valid.

“Our belief in and need for collaboration and cooperation made me want to be a librarian,” she says. “I often talk about how wonderful it would be if we could cooperate more across state lines. There is really no reason we can’t.”

Jo Budler’s efforts to work locally, regionally, and nationally to find a way to make ebooks accessible to all Americans is only one compelling example of her activism to come up with collaborative solutions. The results of that work are the product of her passionate drive to strengthen library service.