FEATURE
E-books
olds owns a cell phone, and the mobile web is expected to be bigger than desktop internet use by 2015.
T
Kevin Sayars is president and general manager of
ebrary, which became part of ProQuest earlier this year
Another trend that we are seeing is a shift
in spending from print to digital as libraries are experiencing budget cuts. Academic libraries, for example, increased their spending on e-books by 23 per cent in 2010. Aggregators can offer a wide range of
content from large publishers that wish to supplement their own digital sales as well as smaller publishers that can’t afford to build their own platforms. Additionally, they offer a more integrated solution to libraries on a fewer number of platforms, which provides a better research experience for the end-user. Aggregators also provide a single point of purchase and easier licensing and invoicing. For the most part, the relationship between
aggregators and publishers is excellent. Book publishers have not traditionally been close to libraries, so aggregators can act not only as a channel and sales team, but also as a resource for market and user intelligence. Additionally, while large publishers with their own platforms are able to sell collections, they often do not have the expertise or ability to sell individual titles. Title-by-title selection is a model that most aggregators can offer publishers for an additional revenue stream. Lastly, ebrary often works with our publishing partners to show customers the enhanced value of offering e-books on both platforms, also known as “dual hosting.”
(purchase),
ebrary offers subscription, perpetual access and
patron-driven acquisition
(PDA). A short-term loans model is slated for the second quarter of this year. All models serve different needs, and many of our customers have acquired
content from ebrary under
multiple models so it is diffi cult to say which is most popular.
Academic Complete with DASH! is our fl agship subscription product, which includes a growing collection of more than 52,100 e-books from 500 publishers. Under this model there is tremendous interest in packaging content from multiple publishers. Academic Complete provides an instant digital library from which libraries can build their e-book collections. Under a perpetual-access model, there is
24 Research Information APR/MAY 2011
he demand for offl ine and online reading on mobile devices is one of the clearest and fastest-growing trends we’ve observed recently. Today, studies show that 90 per cent of 19- to 29-year-
not as much interest in pre-packaged titles from multiple publishers. However, we are seeing some demand for putting together large packages from the university presses, which have a similar profi le and enable libraries to build a university press ‘brand’. Additionally, our e-book Starter Packs, which contain essential titles spanning publishers, have been highly successful, especially among libraries that are not well-resourced in their selection processes. We have not received much interest from
our library customers in purchasing individual chapters or sections of e-books; however we believe it would be useful for faculty in the creation of course packs. ebrary currently offers faculties, students, and
other end-users the ability to rank their search results by individual chapters as well as print
Aggregators act not only as a channel and sales team, but also as a resource for market and user intelligence
individual chapters. We plan to talk to libraries further to better understand their needs in this area. It is increasingly clear that success in the
future will mean more than simply making content available on our platform. True value, regardless of the format, is driven by discovery. The acquisition of ebrary by ProQuest provides enormous opportunities to make our titles discoverable in a wide variety of environments. Soon patrons will be able to discover ebrary titles on the newly-launched ProQuest platform, through Serials Solutions’ Summon [see pages 16 to 18], and through Bowker’s discovery services. In addition, ebrary is keenly aware that libraries
are increasingly interested in ‘pushing’ services to the various environments that patrons use on a daily basis. This means that we must think about discovery beyond the traditional research environment and eloquently integrate it into social networks, mobile devices, and learning management systems. Underpinning all of this is the fact that patrons
care much less about format than they do about simply fi nding the right information the minute they need it. The discovery experience we are creating must take this into account.
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