I had a great time testing out the new Rosen Online Publishing interface, Rosen Learning Center.  This center currently features 12 titles that spotlight Texas.  History, government, land, resources, and missions are just a few of the topics covered in the 12 titles, which are designed for 3rd grade reading levels.  The books meet the [...]

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This post was reprinted in full from the Points of Reference blog at Booklistonline.com. Each year at the ALA Annual Conference, Booklist’s Reference Books Bulletin sponsors a program to discuss various topics related to reference and reference publishing.  This year RBB’s session focused on the process of creating a reference work, from idea to reality.  [...]

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I’ve had several posts in the last 3 months about interactive online reference – a survey, link to a Charleston Presentation, and now a link to the “Off The Shelf” column in Booklist which highlights interactive online reference (and summarizes the survey and the presentation from Charleston).  The article is available at Booklist Online and [...]

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Have you seen Gale/Cengage Learning’s encyclopedia.com lately?  It’s full of vetted reference information with some funky cool new features.  Check it out online and for a more detail description of the site, and it’s potential, read the latest in the Off The Shelf Column at Booklist Online.

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CHICAGO—Booklist Online announces the addition of Points of Reference to its growing family of blogs. Mary Ellen Quinn and a team of front-line experts from academic, public and school libraries post about reference sources and trends in reference publishing and services.

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The April 1, 2009 “Off The Shelf” column features an article on E-book usage data.  The article surveyed 10 e-book vendors and aggregators for information on their usage data.  A comparative chart accompanies the article, which is only available online, on the NSR articles page. 7 vendors replied to the survey, 1 couldn’t participate due [...]

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I just had a nice conversation with John Barnes, Executive VP Strategic Marketing and Business Development, at Gale/Cengage.  I asked John if Gale would be introducing new business models directed towards end users with their recent acquisition of HighBeam.  Below is a brief summary of our discussion.  Thanks John. HighBeam’s clients are a combination of [...]

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The current NSR poll asks, “is your institution using patron driven acquisition to purchase eBooks.”  PDA is a business model, offered by (currently) 3 ebook aggregators  – NetLibrary, EBL, and Ingram Digital.  In this model, patrons determine which eBooks are purchased based on the eBooks they use.  There are many variations to PDA, but each variation does allow for [...]

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Those of you interested in learning more about Follett and Overdrive should take a look at the recent  Off The Shelf column in Booklist Online – E-book Distributors for the Public and School Library Markets.  The article provides an overview of the content, features, and business models of both of these distributors. NetLibrary, due to it’s [...]

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John Barnes, Rolf Janke, Sue Polanka, Michael Ross, Casper Grothwohl For those of you unable to attend the ALA Panel – The Future of Reference Publishing:  A View from the Top, there is a summary of the program available on Booklist Online. We encourage comments, questions, and discussion on the blog.

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