The controversy over the British Library’s Amazon links is not over. The Bookseller reports that Tim Godfray, chief executive of the UK’s Booksellers Association, is asking the British Library’s CEO to review the matter, and other booksellers are expressing dismay at the library “ignoring the whole UK book trade in favor of Amazon.”
Johnny de Falbe of John Sandoe bookshop said: “The British Library says it is ‘providing users with the choice of an alternative method of obtaining a title if, for some reason, it is not available in the Library’s Reading Rooms’. But users have always had an alternative method: it is called going to a bookshop. Are the British Library’s directors unaware that Britain has a great many very good bookshops? If so, they should discover them and learn what booksellers do besides simply taking money for products. If not, do they think everyone else attaches so little value to a diversity of bookshops and booksellers?”
De Falbe points out that the British Library is supported by public funds, and finds it odd that a public organization is throwing its support behind a private, “aggressively competitive retailer.”
I wonder if the British Library had any idea what kind of a Pandora’s Box it was opening with the Amazon links? You would think that it would have been hard for any book-related institution to miss the furor Amazon’s recent moves (such as buying The Book Depository) had been causing in the British bookselling world.
