Public Lending Rights - Where are we up to? As one of the new NZSA reps on the PLR committee, and having the wonderful experiences of also being the recipient of PLR and ELR in Australia (as a dual citizen), I was keen to see what was happening and what we could change, for the better. The depressing answer is – not much, and especially not for children’s writers and illustrators. The main issue for us in the children’s book world, I think, is that school libraries are not included in the library book surveys carried out. As there is no separate Educational Lending Right scheme, like there is in Australia, it’s not a surprise that many children’s authors and illustrators feel pretty disgruntled about PLR. The biggest problem, I discovered, is that PLR is still operating under the original legislation passed in Parliament in 2008, and this legislation is very limiting in its scope. It applied originally to mainly analogue publishing and is now way out of date, given e-books and audioboo...