Over the last two years attendees of the Charleston Conference have been hearing about The Charlotte Initiative for Permanent Acquisition of E-books by Academic Libraries, a Andrew W. Mellon funded research grant to study the current state of e-books in the academic market. At the heart of the project are three core principles proposed for e-book licenses:

* Provision of irrevocable perpetual access and archival rights.
* Allowance for unlimited simultaneous users.
* Freedom from any Digital Rights Management (DRM), including (but not limited to) use of proprietary formats, restricted access to content, or time-limited access terms.

The last two years have brought many changes to the ever-evolving academic e-book market, and now that the project is coming to a close, participants of the grant would like to share their findings and help continue the conversations around the e-books.  To this end, we will be offering a free symposium to all Charleston Conference attendees.  The symposium will focus on possible solutions, including evolving business models and publisher feedback to the principles and will present highlights from the four research team findings.

Please join us:

When: Monday, November 6th 1:00 – 4:00pm
Where: Courtyard Marriot, Grand Cypress Ballroom

Registration for this event is outside of the general Charleston Conference registration so please register at:

https://goo.gl/forms/6n2JHVFskwnoocfq2   Registration is limited so please register soon!

On behalf of the Charlotte Initiative Project Team, we look forward to seeing you there!   We’ll share information about the schedule soon. Here are the speakers addressing our key topics:

Licensing Principles:
Theresa Liedtka, University of Tennessee - Chattanooga
Rebecca Seger, Oxford University Press

Business Models:
October Ivins, Ivins eContent Solutions
John Sherer, UNC Press
Michael Zeoli, YBP

Course Use:
Liz Siler, UNC Charlotte
Kelly Denzer, Davidson College
Platforms and Preservation:
Kate Davis, Scholar’s Portal/OCUL

Usability:
Alison Bradley, Davidson College

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