Lisa Carlucci Thomas, Digital Services Librarian at Southern Connecticut State University, spoke about access models for eBooks, specifically with mobile devices and dedicated eReaders. Lisa spoke about barriers to access stating that restrictive DRM, licensing, and incompatible formats are all barriers to accessibility of eBooks.  Additionally, devices all have different loading options. Librarians have to [...]

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Anh Bui, Executive Publication Manager, Books Products, at HighWire Press presented, “discoverability and efficiency: how users get to content they value.”  She quoted Clay Shirky, It’s really not information overload, it’s filter failure (Clay Shirky, 2008).  Ann stated that information filters can be used/activated by users or they can be used/activated by us (librarians/publishers). An [...]

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Michael Gorrell, Sr. VP and CIO of EBSCO, discussed several challenges that EBSCO (and other publishers/vendors) are experiencing while integrating content. Some of these challenges include: licensing content from a diverse set of sources processing heterogeneous content homogenously searching everything with precision and breadth at the same time displaying different data so that their uniqueness [...]

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Cory Tucker, Head of Collection Development from UNLV and Emilie Delquie, VP of Publishers Communication Group provided an overview of the variety of ways in which electronic content is being procured in libraries.  Cory discussed several current driving factors for procurement including decreasing library budgets, the variety of business models available, and network level access [...]

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The XXX Annual Charleston Conference gets underway on Wednesday with a variety of Pre-conferences.  One of which is E-everything, a full day discussion of eBooks, eJournals, multimedia, and how to best acquire, access, and deliver to libraries and end users.  In addition to the pre-conferences, there are no less than 30 sessions about eBooks.  I’ll [...]

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ebrary announced today the launch of the much awaited patron driven acquisition model.  It’s been a couple of years in the making, received considerable testing, and was grown from librarian demand and suggestions.  A brief history: ALAMW Conference, 2009.  ebrary hosted a session to discuss patron driven acquisitions and many librarians were there to offer [...]

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What if your eBook aggregator or perhaps the publisher with whom you now own over 5,000 eBook titles went belly up next week?  What if OCLC and EBSCO never purchased NetLibrary, where would your titles have gone?  Perhaps the 100 titles you’ve bought for your personal Kindle are no good when the device disappears due to [...]

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The XXX Annual Charleston Conference, held in Charleston, S.C. November 3 – 6th, has just released it’s tentative program.  It’s loaded with discussions, papers, and panel presentations on e-books, patron driven acquisition, digital textbooks, and more.  I’ve listed a few of the sessions below, but for a closer look, check out the full program.  Early [...]

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James Mouw, assistant director for technical and electronic resources and the electronic resources officer at the University of Chicago Library, was interviewed for an article in the Chronicle this week.  The article, E-Books: What a Librarian Wants, discusses simultaneous release, DRM, perpetual access, and workflow issues.  James will be speaking at the Charleston Conference in [...]

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If you had top executives from 4 academic eBook aggregators in the same room, what would you ask them?  Seriously, I need to know.  One of the Lively Lunch sessions at the XXX Annual Charleston Conference is an open forum with academic eBook aggregators from ebrary, EBL, Ingram, and NetLibrary.   I’m looking for suggestions on [...]

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