Re: Report of Library E-Book Acquisitions Survey -- MARC records

[Mary Summerfield <msummerfield@yahoo.com>]

Once you are working with a knowledgeable vendor -- and have 
advice from more experienced colleagues in the business-- it is 
not particularly difficult or expensive to have a good quality 
MARC record created for each title in an ebook collection, even 
if the ebook version is the original version.  The records that 
our vendor produces have been praised by libraries that subscribe 
to SPIE eBooks.

Mary Summerfield


From: Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Wed, April 6, 2011 6:29:44 PM
Subject: Re: Report of Library E-Book Acquisitions Survey

Michael,

These are excellent notes.  One comment:

You ask if publishers want to get into the metadata/cataloguing 
game. That's 2 separate questions.  Some publishers will get into 
the cataloguing game, however reluctantly.  But all publishers 
will get into the metadata game.  They have no choice.  No one 
else cares as much about this as they do.  They also are dealing 
with the decline if not outright collapse of the 
bricks-and-mortar sales channel, which puts greater pressure on 
online sales.  For online sales all a publisher has is metadata; 
there is no point-of-sale merchandising possible (except as 
expressed through metadata).  In this instance, libraries are not 
the primary concern, but if a publisher develops robust metadata 
for Amazon and other online venues, why would it be withheld from 
a library?

Joe Esposito