Trains and battleships were two of the most telling metaphors that presenters at last week’s Charleston Conference used in their attempt to describe the strength, speed, and scariness of the changes currently taking place in academic librarianship and scholarly publishing.  The news media and press outlets that focus on education and publishing seem to regard 2009 as a tipping point for public acceptance and business success of e-books.   The speakers at this conference attended by 1,000 academic librarians and scholarly publishers clearly recognized that this enormous change is upon us.

In a talk entitled “I Hear the Train A Comin’”  Kevin Guthrie, President of Ithaka, asked, “When the tracks and the cars come up to everyone’s door, what happens to the beautiful old train station?”  He was of course referring to the impact of the Web on libraries, many of which may no longer be needed as physical repositories of content duplicated down the street, across town, and online.

Responding to this year’s conference theme “Necessity Is the Mother of Invention,” several speakers urged librarians to act quickly and strongly for positive change.   Ivy Anderson of the California Digital Library said that reorienting libraries toward the future was “like turning a battleship around.”  In an inspiring keynote speech, David Lankes of the Information Institute of Syracuse memorably referred to the dubious efficacy of “conducting exit interviews on the deck of the Titanic“!

Lankes urged librarians to recognize their mission “to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities” and become innovative, proactive leaders.  When I described the speech to a colleague here at UNC Press, she immediately said, “That could also apply to publishers!”  I told her that in fact the first audience member to comment during the Q&A session said exactly that.  In another plenary speech, Douglas Armato of the University of Minnesota Press concluded, speaking of libraries and publishers, “If we’re not dealing with this evolution together, we should be.”
(more…)

A significant majority of SAGE Reference titles to be available through Credo

Boston and Oxford, (November 3, 2009) – Credo Reference, the award-winning online reference library, has signed an agreement to launch a SAGE Reference Publisher Collection. Nearly 70 SAGE Reference titles will now be available through the acclaimed Credo Reference platform. (more…)

• Oxford University Press launched Oxford Handbooks Online
• SAGE Reference is making nearly 70 of their top Social Science encyclopedias available in Credo Reference
• Alexander Street Press announced the streaming music and video collections are going mobile in 2010
• EBSCO Publishing announced the “going mobile” version of EBSCO host
• Facts on File (Infobase Publishing) launched a new curriculum video on demand subscription service
• Rosen and Gale have teamed up to distribute one anothers online health resources - Rosen’s Teen Health & Wellness and Gale’s Health & Wellness Resource Center
• Gale’s Powersearch and InfoTrac now support the MLA 7 format

(more…)

Increasing the discoverability of ebooks means making sure they are easy to find when users are looking for them. Increasing the visibility means placing them in the user’s workflow even when they aren’t actively looking for them. Both initiatives are vital when placing books online. In this session we’ll discuss the issues surrounding the discoverability and visibility of ebooks, focusing on the academic, research, and clinical areas.

Anh Bui, Executive Publication Manager, Books Products, HighWire Press -Bui presentation

Session 4 – eBook Economics
Morgan & Claypool Publishers are famous for publishing high quality STM e-books without DRM.  As a new publisher, the company’s main focus is on ebooks rather than print.  The company’s cofounder, Mike Morgan, will speak about how this enables them to create works that can fill the needs of researchers, students and librarians in ways that traditional books cannot.

Mike Morgan, President and CoFounder, Morgan & Claypool -Morgan presentation
As the ebook has developed, so too has the business model.  Here, a variety of ebook business models will be examined, highlighting opportunities and challenges with each, and presenting creative business models for unique situations.

Cynthia Cleto, Global eProduct Manager, eBooks, Springer Science+Business Media - Cleto presentation

A plethora of ebook readers are coming to the market along with a wide variety of solutions for libraries to serve them. Marcus Woodburn will give an overview of the digital solutions currently available (and rumored) and a sense of how the publishing world is adapting to them in terms of pricing and rights.  Which books are they making available?  What are the limitations?  What changes can we expect?  He will also examine digital textbook solutions serving the academic population directly, but which should hold interest for the library community.

Marcus Woodburn, Director of Publisher Business Development, Ingram Content Group presentation

Digital content is a growing part of library collections. Librarians would like to offer patrons the ability to effectively access and download this content to e-Readers, allowing for portability and greater interaction with the text. But, this type of service poses challenges.   What readers are available? Can a device that was developed for the consumer market work in an institutional setting? How much money should be budgeted to try them?   What factors should be considered when purchasing e-Readers for patron use?  Anne Behler will share her real-world experience with establishing an e-Reader pilot project at Penn State, which involved partnering with Sony Electronics, Inc. to investigate the e-Reader’s place in an academic setting.

Anne Behler, Information Literacy Librarian, Penn State University presentation

Session 2 – eBooks and Libraries:  Workflow & Cataloging Issues

Implementing ebooks in a traditional print environment presents different challenges and opportunities.  Cataloging, workflow integration, content discovery, vendors and licensing agreements, budgeting, and patron driven acquisition issues will be discussed along with practical advice from librarians.

Lindsey Schell, Bibliographer, University of Texas at Austin presentation

Supplier-provided MARC records-with-purchase have become the norm for aggregated ebooks as libraries cope with large title sets and limited resources.  While this appears to be an extension of the general trend toward shelfready new purchases and outsourced cataloging, the ebook model is not a parallel to the print paradigm.  Deb Silverman will discuss some of the issues that both libraries and vendors face as they try to integrate ebook records from vendors into their locally curated catalogs, and how the cataloging community is addressing some of these issues to insure that the catalog functions as an integrated effective discovery tool.
Deb Silverman, Manager of Technical Services, Coutts Information Systems presentation

These notes were done on the fly, forgive any typos.

Demographics:

• 589 responses
• 71% academic libraries responded - most in north america (was Mexico in the NA grouping?), 55% USA
• 87% members of consortium

Financial outlook

•  420 responses
• libraries with budgets of less than 2 million were majority of respondents
• budget reductions of 20% or more in most north american libraries
• 40% believe this will be stable over the next year
• non north american libraries were a bit more optimistic about budgets
• 40-44% feel budgets will stand still (but they are not counting inflation as a factor) (more…)
  ]]> http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/?feed=rss2&p=355 http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/?p=355 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NoShelfRequired/~3/PFM_zkZHm6s/ http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/?p=351#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:28:29 +0000 spolanka http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/?p=351 Yesterday at the Charleston Conference we hosted a preconference on eBooks, titled “eBooks: Not just another binding.”  Carolyn Morris from Coutts, James Galbraith from OCLC, Janet Fischer from PCG Industries, and Sue Polanka from Wright State University organized the preconference.  There were 5 sessions on a variety of topics.  The discussion was great, questions were thought provoking, and feedback was excellent.  A great big thanks to all of our speakers for sharing their time and expertise.

  The presentations from the sessions will be posted here on the NSR blog.  The first session was on eBook standards, presented by Emilie Delquie of PCG and Randy Petway of Publishing Technologies.  Their presentations are attached below.  Contact information for each speaker is in the slides.

  Session 1 – eBook Standards

  Our speakers will examine ebook standards from an industry and library perspective, specifically: What standards exist? What standards should exist? What librarians want in the way of ebook standards.

  Emilie Delquie, Head of Research, Publishers Communication Group presentation

  Randy Petway, Exec Vice President, Strategy & Business Development, Publishing Technology presentation

  ]]> http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/?feed=rss2&p=351 http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/?p=351