Re: Ebooks in libraries

[Pippa Smart <pippa.smart@gmail.com>]

Responding to the comment below about the (lack of) ability to 
buy individual titles and build e-book collections:

Ebrary has launched a "Patron Driven Acquisition" model which 
allows libraries to pick-and-mix titles from a range of 
publishers to build their collections. It also allows free trials 
which activate a purchase/subscription once the user (=patron) 
has made a specified amount of use of the e-book (e.g. the first 
5 downloads are free but the 6th actitates a purchase) which will 
allow libraries to buy books that their patrons really use (which 
is not always the case in the print environment). 
http://www.ebrary.com/corp/librariesPatron.jsp Pippa


*****

Pippa Smart
Research Communication and Publishing Consultant
PSP Consulting
Tel: +44 7775 627688 or +44 1865 864255
email: pippa.smart@gmail.com
Web: www.pspconsulting.org

****

On 1 November 2010 23:10,  <J.W.Schoones@lumc.nl> wrote:

> Toby,
>
> Indeed, many publishers have a lot of ebooks to offer. The 
> observation that they have successfully grappled, cut the knot 
> and have ebooks available for libraries, is an observation from 
> the point of view of publishers, not academic libraries. The 
> problem for academic libraries in this is the fact that 
> title-by-title acquisition is generally not an option offered 
> by publishers. And also, in my case (medicine), an important 
> supplier of books, the publisher Elsevier, does not (yet) offer 
> an institutional platform for their medical ebooks at all. In 
> general, yes, a library can buy a whole set or sub-set of 
> books. But these very pricy sets are not affordable, nor do 
> these sets have anything to do with collection development. So, 
> in my view, the publishers have not yet successfully grappled, 
> did not yet cut the knot and have not yet made ebooks available 
> for libraries.
>
> Cordially,
>
> Jan W. Schoones
> Walaeus Library LUMC
> j.w.schoones@lumc.nl
> www.twitter.com/walaeus
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of
> Toby.GREEN@oecd.org
> Sent: donderdag 28 oktober 2010 23:46
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: RE: Ebooks in libraries
>
> Joe,
>
> I'm really puzzled by your final comments - "publishers are still
> grappling with how to make e-books available to libraries. Who
> will be the first to cut the knot?".
>
> We, along with many other publishers ranging from Elsevier and
> Springer to OUP, the World Bank and even World Tourism
> Organisation, have successfully grappled, cut the knot and have
> ebooks available for libraries, including all front list titles
> and many backlist too (in our case, we've got everything back to
> 1998 in e-book form, around 5,000 titles in all).
>
> Have I missed something?
>
> Toby Green
> Head of Publishing
> Public Affairs & Communications Directorate OECD
> 75775 Paris Cedex 16
> toby.green@oecd.org
> www.oecdilibrary.org