No Shelf Required

Results of CIBER study on library finances, presented by Mark Kendall of YBP and Christopher Warnock of ebrary.

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) [Read more →]

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.

eBook Standards presentation by Emilie Delquie

eBook standards presentation by Randy Petway

• School tries e-books – and gets sued
• Smartphone eBook Readers Multiply
• Everything We Know About Apple’s Touchscreen Tablet
• The E-Reader Explosion: A Cheat Sheet

Received a press release from Gale/Cengage today. Baker and Taylor will now distribute the GVRL e-book collection, Lit Crit, and the Directory Library.  B&T is the first wholesaler to sell GVRL.  See the full press release below.

[Read more →]

Thanks to TeleRead for the heads up on this one.

eBook  Readers and Standards…..Where to Next?

Webinar, November 18th, 11:00 EST

Speakers:  Michael Smith, Director of the IDPF and Sarah Rotman Epps, eBook Market Analyst at Forrester

As the eBook market rapidly unfolds, it seems to get more complex by the day. Publishers are struggling to adapt as competitive and consumer pressures demand that their titles be compatible with the multitude of new eBook applications and eReaders coming to market. To develop a successful eBook production strategy, you need to take a clear position on where the market is today and will be tomorrow. In this 60-minute webinar, Sarah Rotman Epps, Forrester’s eBook Market Analyst, and Michael Smith, Director of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) which manages the ePub standard, present their highly informed views on the future for eBook readers, formats and standards. How will it all shake out? Join these two industry experts to get the inside track on the future and better position yourself to take advantage of the biggest driver of industry innovation to hit the publishing world in decades – eBooks.

register

Interesting article in USA today about the Cushing Academy, a New England Boarding School, that has bypassed the print library for a digital one, using the Kindle.  Here’s a couple of quotes from the Headmaster, Jim Tracy.

“It was really to save libraries five, 10, 15 years down the road,” he says. “What the students are telling us is: ‘We’re not using the print books. You can keep giving them to us, but they’re just going to collect dust.’ So we’re saying, ‘Let’s be honest: Let’s give them the best electronic information available.’ ”

Actually, he says, he has hired more librarians to help students navigate the electronic stacks and tell “what is valuable information or reliable from what is junk.”

There are tons of comments on the article, which are always just as fun to read.

ebrary is launching a monthly sweepstakes for a free ebook a month for one’s institution - complete with ebrary’s  InfoTools.  To enter, just recommend an ebrary title.  Details of the contest are below, in the ebrary press release.  This is a fun idea, but I have to chuckle.  Can you imagine having a sweepstakes for a free print book?  Oh, what technology will do. [Read more →]

If you are headed to Charleston next week and have Wednesday free, please consider attending the preconference.  The full program is listed here. Summaries/highlights will be posted to the blog after the event.

EBOOKS:  NOT JUST ANOTHER BINDING
XXIX CHARLESTON CONFERENCE - ISSUES IN BOOK AND SERIAL ACQUISITION
CHARLESTON, SC, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2009:

eBooks are not just another binding. As with any new technology, librarians and publishers are discovering many challenges in implementing ebooks. This full day pre-conference will explore several of these challenges including: ebook standards, such as epub, DRM, interface features, and archiving; ebook readers and their use by aggregators and libraries; workflow issues in libraries like approval plans and catalog records; ebook economics including business models and transitioning from P to E; and the issues surrounding the discoverability and visibility of ebooks.
[Read more →]

David Rothman: How e-Books Could Smarten Up Kids and Stretch Library Dollars: A National Plan

Two-faced gadget is e-reader plus netbook

BookServer: A Plan to Build an Open Web of Books

Google Editions Embraces Universal E-book Format

Report on Nook news conference: B&N switching to ePub—plus other news conf tidbits

College students resisting Kindle DX, says AP—but someone thinks it makes a cool teleprompter

Institutional Subscriptions to Google Books with Advertising? Google Won’t Rule It Out - 10/12/2009 - Library Journal

HP, UMich deal means a “real future for scanned books

Bowker and AAP sponsored a webinar today on US Consumer Book Buying.  It was incredibly well organized and full of good data.  My notes and comments are included below.

Speakers

• Tina Jordan (AAP)  moderator
• Kelly Gallagher (Bowker) speaker

2009 data, first 6 months, based on what consumer is buying/reading

• 2008 - e-commerce the dominant channel for book sales, beating out brick n mortar
• 2009 - so far, large chain bookstores are back at the top
• Consumer is King and defines the marketplace, we can’t publish like we used to - the old supply/demand model.

3 indicators - impact of economy, competition for leisure time, product selection (genres, formats)  [Read more →]