In September 2020, amidst the pandemic lockdowns in the UK, three academic librarians including myself set up the #ebooksos campaign with an open letter to the House of Commons Education Select Committee urging an investigation into the lack of text availability, extortionate pricing, bundling and restrictive licensing in the academic e-book publishing industry. The open letter quickly gained signatures from library workers, lecturers, students, Heads of Services, a few Vice Chancellors and even the CEO of Creative Commons, not just from the UK but from all over the world, indicating that the e-book problem was a global one. The campaign was featured in The Guardian and the BBC and even trended on Reddit, such was the level of interest in the impact that e-book pricing and availability was having on university students. Things have not improved – the e-book market remains broken -  and so the campaign continues today; with many changes occurring in UK government positions in recent times, #ebooksos continues to lobby those involved with the Education Select Committee, as well as to submit evidence to the Competitions and Markets Authority in the UK who are considering our case. 

As the campaign has progressed, it has raised many questions, not just around what the solution might be and what alternatives there may be to the traditional academic e-book publishing model, but also around ethical considerations in the processes and practices that are a key part of our roles as librarians. Over the past two years, we at #ebooksos have argued for the need for critical collection development and information-literate behaviour on the part of librarians when it comes to navigating the e-book market as it is currently. This behaviour can manifest as a form of activism, which brings with it its own risks to be balanced alongside these ethical considerations. 

Australian academic libraries (and indeed public libraries) are facing the same issues with e-books as their counterparts in the UK. So, as new and emerging librarians, what can you do? What is your role in facing the issue? What is critical collection development and how do you practice it? What do we mean by activism and information-literate practitioners? What are the considerations and why should you engage in this kind of behaviour? Whilst we are talking about this in terms of the situation with e-books, these are the kinds of questions which we as librarians should be asking ourselves throughout our career as we encounter issues and situations which threaten our ability to provide access to information for our users.