Submitted by Staff on
Good afternoon,
I just wanted to express my enthusiastic support for the WPLC statewide e-book/e-content buying pool. A statewide buying pool was one of the recommendations of the e-book summit held in May, and I have been very impressed by how rapidly and thoughtfully WPLC and the statewide library community have taken steps toward making this a reality.
It is clear that the public increasingly wants greater access to e-books and other digital content,and this trend is likely to accelerate in the future. To meet this need, Wisconsin libraries need to greatly expand their digital offerings.
I believe the WPLC e-content buying pool is an excellent example of library cooperation that results in benefits that are very much greater than would be accomplished by libraries acting individually without coordination. Through this cooperation, Wisconsin libraries will be pooling their resources to get much greater buying power and a much better return for taxpayer dollars. Also, it is my hope that this cooperation results in expanded digital resources being available to all state residents—a goal that the Wisconsin library community has long worked together to achieve.
I encourage all Wisconsin public libraries and library systems to participate in this e-book buying pool.
Many thanks to WPLC and the many Wisconsin librarians that have been working to make this buying pool a success!
Kurt Kurt J. Kiefer
Assistant State SuperintendentDivision for
Libraries, Technology, and Community Learning
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction
kurt.kiefer@dpi.wi.gov