During the 15 years following the dawn of the digital age, only the major U.S. players were able to develop e-book distribution platforms. They did so using proprietary technologies, thereby locking their users into “walled gardens”. Then came the era of standardization. The PDF and EPUB formats facilitated the production of e-books. However, it took nearly 10 more years for the distribution and access to these e-books to become widespread and for an ecosystem alternative to the major platforms to emerge. The keynote will cover the conditions that enabled the creation of an open, interoperable, and accessible ecosystem for the production, distribution, and reading of e-books and audiobooks. The COBISS Ela platform is striking proof that these open and interoperable initiatives work, and that open standards and open source are powerful tools.
However, the story doesn’t end there, and the keynote will therefore cover innovations currently under development in our laboratory specializing in digital publishing—particularly in the fields of audiobooks and comics—the early stages of open-source projects in public and national libraries, as well as the challenges and opportunities arising from the emergence of AI in our field. The presentation will be illustrated with several use cases drawn from the experiences of some of EDRLab’s 120 member organizations.
