Digital Books in Polish Public Libraries: Case Study of Partnership with the Commercial Distributor Legimi

ABSTRACT

This article outlines a case study of the partnership between Polish public libraries and Legimi, a commercial distributor of digital books operating on both the trade book and library markets. Legimi and representatives of the libraries were interviewed in order to examine the reasons why libraries contract with commercial actors, the extent to which these services are used, the rationale for selecting the billing models, and which funding sources support libraries in this regard. Arrangements for Legimi’s services are negotiated mainly through library consortia. Currently, approximately 42% of all libraries in Poland provide digital books through Legimi.

KEYWORDS:

• Polish public libraries
• digital books
• e-lending
• partnership
• Legimi

Acknowledgments

We thank Legimi’s representatives for their help in data collection. We would also like to thank all the representatives of Polish libraries who agreed to participate in our research for the interviews and correspondence.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. According to the Legimi representative, over 100 Polish libraries have access to Legimi through individual contracts (Legimi representative, e-mail message, February 20, 2023a).

2. In accordance with its contract with publishers, Legimi needs to purchase a new digital copy of a title once 15 users have checked it out (or more precisely, when 15 users have read a free excerpt of the book) or one year after the first checkout (according to a Legimi representative, personal interview conducted through the MS Teams platform, February 8, 2023).

3. We used data from Legimi for 2023 and data from the 2021 report of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as of December 31, 2021 (GUS 2022b) to calculate the percentage of libraries because the official reports do not provide the most recent data on public libraries excluding branches.

4. Based on the average exchange rates for 2021 and 2022.

5. The Lower Silesian Public Library in Wrocław reached its page limit in September 2023. Although the library still has a page limit contract with Legimi it limited the number of annual codes issued in 2024 to 2,000.

6. It is worth noting that the number of active borrowers in some libraries includes those who have borrowed both physical and digital books from Legimi or similar services. Therefore, some surveyed libraries had difficulties providing data on the relationship between the number of active borrowers of the library and the number of users of the book streaming services.

7. Additionally, 499 libraries gained access from their own funds (MKiDN 2022, 41).

8. The opening of a borrowed title is counted only once, but with the date of the last action, not the first. This leads to errors in interpreting decreases in the number of loans, particularly those transferring to subsequent years rather than months.

9. There are, of course, standards regarding library statistics (e.g., ISO 2789:2022 Information and documentation – International library statistics– see ISO 2022) and guidance from statistics offices on understanding particular terms. However, it is worth noting that the technological solutions available to librarians do not always directly correspond to the proposed terms. Librarians’ free interpretation of them then translates into under or overestimation of statistics related to the number of loans and users.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the “Excellence Initiative – Research University” Program for the University of Wrocław for the period 2020–2026.

Notes on contributors

Kamila Augustyn

Kamila Augustyn is PhD Assistant Professor in the Institute of Information and Media Studies, University of Wrocław. As a digital media scholar, she is particularly interested in how digitization alters value chains, and changes the way in which knowledge is produced, shared, and acquired. In her research, she examines both the global publishing industry and the contemporary Polish book market. She investigates the field of publishing studies by conducting a bibliometric analysis of the research literature in this area. A member of the Polish Bibliological Society as well as the Editorial Board of Publishing Research Quarterly.

Maciej Liguzinski

Maciej Liguzinski is PhD Candidate in the Department of Archivistics, Library and Information Science at Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway. In his doctoral research project, he analyzes lending of digital books in public libraries in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in the context of cultural policy. His research interests include digital books, library studies, cultural policy research and the sociology of literature.

Dorota Siwecka

Dorota Siwecka is PhD Assistant Professor in the Institute of Information and Media Studies, University of Wrocław in Poland and a member of the Board of the Commission for New Technologies of the Polish Librarians Association. In her research she is dealing mostly with bibliographic information. Her teaching interests include library information activities, their promotion and the implementation of new technologies in libraries.