Livelink for Learning Management
ebrary
(http://www.ebrary.com)
announced that it has launched ebrarian 2.0 with some pilot library customers.
It will globally roll out ebrarian 2.1 with advanced features specifically
for libraries in the first quarter of this year. ebrarian 2.0 marks the
company’s first official move into the library market. In the first version
of ebrarian, ebrary had worked with technology partners McGraw-Hill Primis
Custom Publishing and Pearson’s Learning Network to distribute content
to customers. ebrary also announced that it has partnered with three more
prestigious academic publishers to provide access to full-text copyrighted
titles.
The pilot library customers
that are offering ebrarian to their patrons are Stanford University Libraries
& Academic Information Resources; the Yale University Library; and
the Peninsula Library System, which is a consortium of 34 public and community
college libraries in northern California. These libraries will be providing
their patrons with unlimited, multiuser access to books and documents in
Adobe PDF from more than 100 publishers that have partnered with ebrary
to make their content available.
According to ebrary CEO
Christopher Warnock, the company has spent the last year and a half talking
with librarians about delivering an information product that meets their
needs. ebrarian allows libraries to augment their existing collections
with ebrary’s digital collection through tools that are already being utilized.
Library patrons can use content from the digital collections through their
Web-based OPAC system the way they have been using other library collections.
ebrarian integrates with libraries’ existing work flow, digital resources,
and catalog and administrative processes, specifically through full MARC
records for all titles in the ebrary repository. Warnock stressed that
another advantage for libraries is that there are no viewing restrictions
on the number of simultaneous users of a specific title or content.
ebrary’s InfoTools technology
makes it easy for patrons to find and use the information they need and
interact with content at the word level. Patrons can do full-text searches
within a specific document or of all available documents in the ebrary
repository. They can also search by author, title, publisher, or subject.
The new ebrarian now offers online annotations, highlighting, and bookmarking.
And with InfoTools, libraries can create custom links to the knowledge
resources of their choice, including definitions, biographical information,
maps, and translations, as well as other digital resources within the library.
“ebrary’s goal is
to help libraries cost-effectively and efficiently expand their collections
beyond their physical shelves, while providing new distribution and revenue
opportunities for our publishing partners,” said Warnock. “We are all very
excited that Yale, Stanford, and Peninsula Library System have chosen our
solution and look forward to continually working with them and libraries
worldwide to meet their growing needs for digital information and resources.”
ebrary’s service is delivered
via a custom Web site that the company creates, hosts, and maintains. Libraries
use a 500 KB software plug-in for their patrons’ machines. The Web sites
do not have advertising and they can be customized with libraries’ logos
and branding. Another benefit of the service for libraries is that they
can use real-time activity reports to gain information on usage and transactions
in order to make more informed collection-development decisions.
ebrary charges an annual
license fee for implementation, a technology license, and maintenance.
Pricing varies depending on the type of library and its size. Costs for
academic and special libraries range from $1 to $1.50 per FTE (full-time
equivalent); the cost for public libraries is about 5 cents per user. Additionally,
the company charges for blocks of print/copy transactions, which enable
it to compensate its publishing partners. Print/copy transactions cost
approximately 15 to 50 cents per page. The exact rate is determined by
ebrary’s publishing partners. Libraries can prepay for blocks of print/copy
credits (at a 30-percent discount) in $500 increments, and can purchase
additional blocks when that is used up.
At the ALA Midwinter Meeting
2002, ebrary announced that all libraries that sign up for ebrarian prior
to February 28, 2002 would receive print/copy credits worth approximately
25 percent of the total service price. During this time frame ebrary is
also offering a cap on its service: Academic libraries of any size can
offer the ebrarian service to patrons for no more than $9,500 per year.
Special ALA rates will be renewable through June 30, 2003.
Warnock emphasized that
ebrarian protects copyright and gives people a viable option for fair use.
Viewing is freely available but patrons can choose to pay for the convenience
of a copy, which then justly compensates the publishers on a per-use basis.
At Stanford, students pay for printing a copy or cutting and pasting text,
just like making a photocopy. At some of the other library installations,
the libraries are subsidizing copying for their patrons.
The ebrary collection currently
includes 5,000 titles, admittedly a modest number. But according to Warnock,
these are high-quality titles and the list will grow quickly. He noted
that ebrary currently has some important new titles that are not yet available
in print format. The majority of them have been published in the last 3
years, but the collection also contains some of the Penguin Classics titles.
Participating publishers include The McGraw-Hill Companies, Random House,
Penguin Classics, Taylor & Francis, Yale University Press, John Wiley
& Sons, Greenwood, and many others. The three new publishers just added
are Harvard University Press, Cornell University Press, and Indiana University
Press.
Publishers can benefit from
the recent enhancements to ebrarian. Now, in addition to the print/copy
pricing business model, they can also opt for subscription or pay-per-view
models if they choose. “ebrary has a unique business model that enables
us to tap new, highly targeted online markets without cannibalizing our
traditional sales channels or jeopardizing copyrights,” said William Sisler,
director of Harvard University Press. “By partnering with ebrary, we can
profit from securely distributing our titles to libraries and other markets
that are purchasing both digital and hard-copy materials. We look forward
to working with ebrary on this exciting new venture.”
ebrary is still not announcing
a launch date for its ebrary.com site. Warnock stressed that it is not
really intended as a destination site but is designed to showcase the possibilities
of the ebrarian platform.
The new launch into the
library market could prove to be very successful for ebrary. The timing
for ebrarian 2.0 might just be right, especially given the lukewarm reception
accorded to e-books that must be purchased individually and read by only
one person at a time, usually on special e-book devices.