You might have heard about Wiley pulling hundreds of ebooks out of ProQuest Ebook Central in August, just before classes started. The removals included popular textbooks. Wiley didn’t offer the ebooks for sale in any other way, so instructors and library workers were left scrambling to choose different textbooks, or to replace the ebooks with print copies for course materials.
In our context here, about 500 Wiley ebooks were removed from our Ebook Central subscription, but fortunately we already owned about 300 of these through our longstanding Wiley frontlist purchase. The disruption was not nearly as widespread as that experienced at other universities. But we still conveyed our displeasure direct to Wiley.
The situation became a bona fide global ebook news story.
Inside Higher Ed: Publisher Blocks Access to Ebooks, Scrambling Fall Courses
Irish Library Association: Irish Librarians condemn publisher Wiley’s removal of hundreds of titles from ebook collections
On October 5, Wiley reversed its decision.
Wiley: Statement on Wiley eBooks Featured in ProQuest Academic Complete Library
Inside Higher Ed: Responding to Criticism, Publisher Reinstates Blocked Ebooks
Yes, this is a partial victory, in the sense that Wiley promises to keep these ebooks available only until June 2023. Beyond that we don’t know whether they will be pulled from Ebook Central again. But this still must be understood as a win, a precedent, and, perhaps most importantly, an example of what can result when library staff loudly and collectively protest bad publisher practices.
It’s really important to remember that this kind of removal, quite sudden and dramatically impactful, is very rare. Ebooks are removed from our subscriptions as part of routine maintenance, but we have processes in place to assess and purchase books slated for removal, in advance.
Thanks again to everybody in public services and to the bibhelp team for helping those who were affected by these removals. CSU and the CatMet team will watch out for more information about the restoration of these ebooks, so they can be recatalogued where warranted.