RE: $1million at U Texas/Austin on E-Books?

[Ann Okerson <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu>]

Bill DeJohn sends the following message:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Bill DeJohn" <William.T.De-John-1@tc.umn.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Subject: RE: $1million at U Texas/Austin on E-Books?
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 14:59:21 -0600

Try these locations. evidently there are several out there in 'niche'
subject areas but probably no broker providing purchases from them all, at
this time. I didn't think the reference to U of Texas Austin and $1
million indicated what "period of time" that $1 million would be spent
over.....

books24X7.com has IT (technical) related books (only ~300).  

itknowledge.com also has titles available. In addition, some individual
publishers sell their titles in electronic format, typically in PDF format
which requires a separate software package, such as the Adobe reader. And,
more are coming as indicated in the NYTimes article.

Bill DeJohn, MINITEX Library Information Network

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu]On Behalf Of Ann Okerson
> Sent: Saturday, December 11, 1999 11:25 AM
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: $1million at U Texas/Austin on E-Books?
>
>
> According to the New York Times (12/09/99) and Edupage (12/10/99) citing
> the NY Times, the University of Texas at Austin is soon to spend $1million
> on licensing electronic books.  We didn't know there were that many to
> be licensed out there, do dear readers, do tell us what sources exist
> apart from netLibrary.com?
>
> The Moderators
> ____________________
> RACING TO CONVERT BOOKS TO BYTES
>
> Although skepticism remains as to whether readers will embrace
> digital books, interest in the electronic format is growing, with
> young people leading the trend.  The University of Texas at
> Austin plans to spend $1 million to increase its current
> collection of 6,000 electronic books.  Students are checking out
> the university's digital books at astonishing rates, says
> librarian Dennis Dillon.  "Usually a book has a one-third chance
> of being checked out," Dillon says.  "So to have some title
> checked out 25 times in two months--that's shocking."  Companies
> such as Microsoft are preparing for a wave of digital reading,
> predicting that electronic books will overtake print books within
> 10 years.  Meanwhile, traditional publishers such as Random House
> are skeptical about the new format but are still moving to
> digitize all of their titles.  Startups such as netLibrary, which
> sells electronic books to libraries, are working to draw readers
> by offering a large selection of titles.  However, in order to
> get publishers to sell titles, these companies need to prove that
> sufficient demand exists for the digital format.
> (New York Times 12/09/00