SIPX, Inc., a company providing web based service for digital copyright management and delivery, announced today several new library and publishing partners.  SIPX (pronounced SIP-ex) developed from a research project at Stanford university just nine months ago.  It appears they are off to a great start.  The press release about the new partners is below.  If you’d like a more first hand, personal account of SIPX, then I encourage you to listen to the interview I had with Franny Lee, a SIPX Co-Founder and VP of University Relations and Product Development.  Franny and I discussed the services, business model, and benefits of SIPX for libraries, MOOCs, and publishers.

Franny Lee’s interview and 50+ more are available on the NSR interviews page. [Read more →]

This is a great idea.  I hope many of you will read the book and promote it to your patrons.  I look forward to seeing the results of this pilot program. Follow the program on twitter – #BigLibraryRead.

Cleveland, May 16, 2013 – Today, more than 7,500 libraries around the world are participating in the Big Library Read, a two-week pilot program launched yesterday that enables millions of library patrons to simultaneously access and read a single eBook title until June 1, 2013. The selected title, The Four Corners of the Sky, by Michael Malone, is available in OverDrive Read, Kindle (U.S. only) and EPUB formats and can be read on virtually any device.

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Library vendors bringing e-content to libraries have in recent years taken different routes to draw attention to their long-term business strategies. Some have aggressively pursued new publishing initiatives — releasing more original content and adding it to their e-offerings; others have focused on perfecting the functionalities of the digital products already available to libraries. Gale’s mission has been distinct its own right and deserves a closer look, namely owing to the series of announcements in the last year pointing to the company’s newly formed alliances with some of the world’s most reputable organizations, including  The National Geographic, the Smithsonian, and, as of April 2013, the Associated Press.

Just what is the ultimate long-term goal behind these partnerships for a library vendor already known for a robust list of library-oriented products and services? Is Gale’s main mission moving forward to cement its role as the preeminent distributor of the world’s journalistic and historical content? Can we expect more partnerships in the future? NSR reached out to Jim Draper, VP and General Manager for Gale (part of Cengage Learning), to shed light on what these partnerships mean for the future of Gale, its partners, and the wider research community.

Note: This interview does not include any discussion of the recent “restructuring news,” as Gale is currently not providing information beyond what’s already been released to the public last week. Per CEO Michael Hansen’s prepared remarks, we can “expect to see a real shift to a user-and sales-led culture [at Gale] that is focused on delivering innovative customer solutions. We have placed an emphasis on coordinated speed across the organization to accelerate innovation.”–MR

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Credo has just announced the release of five new and seven updated Subject and Publisher collections to help libraries enhance their Literati or Credo Online Reference Service subscriptions. Brand new collections include: CQ Press Collection; CRC Press Collection, Economics Collection, Philosophy Collection, and Leadership Collection. Below is the press release from this morning that breaks it all down. [Read more →]

Cengage Learning has announced some restructuring plans this week.  Below is a summary of articles and blog posts highlighting the news.  Later this week, NSR’s Mirela Roncevic will post her article on Gale (part of Cengage Learning) and their recent partnerships.  The article includes an interview with Jim Draper, Vice President and General Manager for Gale.

Cengage Learning investor site: this site includes annual and quarterly reports

Industry articles and blog posts:

Inside Higher Ed:  Cengage publisher could file bankruptcy

Bloomberg News: Cengage CEO seeking restructuring

INFODocket: Cengage CEO seeking restructuring  This includes the Bloomberg news article, embeds some documents and provides additional resource links.

Last January ProQuest  announced a definitive agreement to acquire EBL.  Today, they are announcing that the acquisition of EBL has been completed.  The details from the press release are below.   You may also be interested in listening to an interview I conducted with two of the primary individuals involved in this acquisition, Kari Paulson, formerly President of EBL and now Vice President and General Manager of the combined ebrary and EBL e-book business unit, and Kevin Sayar, Senior Vice President of ProQuest.  Kari and Kevin discussed with me, back in January, how the acquisition plans developed, what customers can expect in the next 18 months, and how customers can relay feedback to both companies.  It doesn’t sound like they have strayed much from the plans laid out back in January.  The press release highlights the same details 5 months later – combine the strongest features of both platforms, actively solicit customer feedback, no disruption to customers during the estimated 18 month integration, and continue to work with current EBL/ProQuest representatives.  [Read more →]

EBSCO and BioOne are in partnership to increase the discovery of over 100,000 scholarly articles from biosence research journals.  The EDS will index the metadata of these journals for full discovery in the EDS.  Mutual customers may then access the fulltext via the EDS.  More from the press release below.

IPSWICH, Mass. — May 7, 2013 — BioOne Online Journals are now searchable via EBSCO Discovery Service^™ (EDS), from EBSCO Publishing. EBSCO Discovery Service users are able to search more than 100,000 scholarly articles from bioscience research journals in the Base Index of EBSCO Discovery Service. The addition of this valuable resource adds to the rapidly growing STM content available to EDS users.

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OCLC announced yesterday that the WorldCat database reached a record number of 2 billion holdings.   I am simply amazed by the growth of this database over the years.  WorldCat has been a great resource for discovering content and extending a library’s collection through interlibrary loan service.  Here is more from the press release:

On Saturday, May 4, at 2:58 a.m. (MDT), the holding symbol for the University of Alberta Libraries, in Edmonton, was set through an automated process to the WorldCat record for the e-book, Evaluation of the City of Lakes Family Health Team Patient Portal Pilot Project: Final Report, published in 2012 by the Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research. It was the 2 billionth holding set in WorldCat. The e-book catalog record was created by the Canadian Electronic Book Library, an e-book provider in Canada, and was enhanced through OCLC’s automated authority control processing system. [Read more →]

Last Friday, ALA released it’s latest Library Technology Report (LTR)  entitled, “Ebook Platforms for Libraries.”  Mirela Roncevic, a No Shelf Required contributor, wrote and compiled the LTR.  Mirela posted on her personal blog about the report including background information about what the report contains, what it’s for, and how it can be used by librarians.  It is a really nice summary of how and why the publication was created.  Here is an excerpt from her post:

At this point, it’s anyone’s guess what the vast and growing ebooks landscape in libraries will look like a year or two from now, but as it stands right now, librarians need to keep up or they will remain behind. That’s what this report aims to do: provide a starting point from which they can embark on their institutions’ ebook ventures. [Read more →]

SAGE has just announced a partnership with Coursera, a leading massive open online course (MOOC) provider, to make its educational resources available to more than three million Coursera students. Starting today, this partnership grants Coursera instructors the option to supplement their video lectures with SAGE’s wide-range of titles at no cost to students. The partnership is enabled by Chegg, a learning platform selected by Coursera as its exclusive DRM/eReader provider.

The list of Coursera partners is growing and includes a number of university presses (among them University of California, Stanford, and Rutgers). SAGE is one of several new publishers to enter into an agreement with the learning platform (others are expected to be announced today). NSR reached out to SAGE to get more information on what this partnership means for the publisher and the wider education community, including libraries (full press release is available below the Q&A).

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