Group items tagged

Springer eBook Collection claims to be "The World's most comprehensive online scientific book collection." There are some contact names on this website that we may want to include as interviewees in our study.

Findings: IPod touch coudl access 84% of Yale's ebook collection Kindle, Sony Reader, etc. could only access 24% of ebook collection

"As many librarians responsible for collections know all too well, licensing agreements often are complex, lengthy documents filled with arcane and unfamiliar terms such as indemnity, severability and force majeure. In an effort to assist librarians (and information providers as well) to understand the issues raised by these licensing agreements, we have prepared an Analysis of Licensing Agreements for Digital Information. The pages that follow include a collection of common terms usually found in licensing agreements, along with a discussion of the pros and cons of specific language in such agreements. We have tried to present language that we believe to be fair and workable for libraries and information providers as well. We have also included examples of provisions that we believe are unduly burdensome or otherwise do not adequately reflect the needs of libraries in providing digital information to their users."

" Duke University Press is attempting to shake things up with its new program, the e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection. Modeled on the pricing structure of the e-Duke Journals Scholarly Collection, e-Duke Books offers online access to at least 100 new titles per year to subscribing libraries, in addition to access to many of the press's backlist titles."

Drexel University's W. W. Hagerty Library received funding [1] in the Fall of 2000 from the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to study the impact of a library's shift to electronic journals on staff and costs. The goals were to perform a comparative analysis for Drexel's library (a case study) and to develop a model for use by other libraries. The results suggest that, when all costs are considered, electronic journals are more cost effective on a per use basis. Storage space for low use bound journals is a major expense. A readership survey shows that the library's electronic collection is widely accepted and extensively used. Since there are methodological difficulties with the data available to make the analyses, this study should be viewed as a single first step to address an issue of critical importance to academic libraries.

"This site from JISC Collections aims to help libraries to make informed decisions about future subscriptions to bibliographic and full text databases. More information about the site's data sourcing and comparison method is available on the 'About' page."

"Established in 1997, the California Digital Library has a wholly digital charter and two complementary but distinct roles. As an arm of systemwide library planning, CDL supports the University of California libraries in their mission of providing access to the world's knowledge for the UC campuses and the communities they serve. In so doing, it directly supports UC's mission of teaching, research, and public service. The CDL also maintains its own distinctive programs emphasizing the development and management of digital collections, innovation in scholarly publishing, and the long-term preservation of digital information."

Drexel University made a switch from mostly print to mostly digital electronic journal collection. A study was conducted to determine whether user patterns changed after the change from print to digital. The outcome of this study was favorable and further studies are planned.

Following the successful completion of the MyCopy pilot project, the specialist publishing group Springer Science+Business Media has, with immediate effect, extended this eBook service to all academic libraries in the USA and Canada that have purchased Springer eBook Collections. All registered library patrons will be able to order a softcover copy of a Springer eBook for their personal use by clicking on a button on the Springer platform www.springerlink.com.

"Following the successful completion of the MyCopy pilot project, the specialist publishing group Springer Science+Business Media has, with immediate effect, extended this eBook service to all academic libraries in the USA and Canada that have purchased Springer eBook Collections. All registered library patrons will be able to order a softcover copy of a Springer eBook for their personal use by clicking on a button on the Springer platform www.springerlink.com."

Libraries already act like Google in many ways. Or I should say instead, Google acts like libraries. It is the mission of both to organize the world's information, to make it openly accessible, to find and present the most authoritative (by many definitions) sources, to instill an ethic of information use in the public, to act as a platform for communities of information, to encourage creation. So how could libraries, in turn, think like Google? Some libraries act as platforms for community content creation (one of my first efforts in hyperlocal community journalism, GoSkokie.net, made with the Medill School of Journalism, is now run by the library). In how many ways could a library act as a platform for the community to inform itself by providing tools and training for content creation? How can libraries collect the wisdom of the crowd that is their communities (e.g., creating collaborative town wikis and maps made by the community)? Librarians and their expert patrons could curate the web and create topic pages that would rise in Google search as valuable resources for the world (if your library is in Florida, it could maintain the best collections of sources for information on manatees or sunburns). What I'd really like to do is brainstorm this question with your readers on my blog: How could they be Googlier?

"Against the Grain (ISSN: 1043-2094) is your key to the latest news about libraries, publishers, book jobbers, and subscription agents. It is a unique collection of reports on the issues, literature, and people that impact the world of books and journals"

This is a summary of a presentation given 2008 American Library Association Preconference was sponsored by the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) Continuing Resources Section Education Committee and was moderated by Susan Davis (University at Buffalo, State University of New York). The panel discussion includes many different electronic resource topics, including pricing, cataloging and management of electronic resources.

2006-2007 statistics of the Association of Research Libraries. Graphs and tables detail trends in expenditures and collections development.

This is a lengthy 2005 article on Google's digital book preservation initiative. Google has undertaken an ambitious project, and the author details how exactly the books digitally preserved, how they are cataloged, and how ancient handwritten books are transformed into searchable text. At the time this article was written, it was still unknown as to what Google planned on doing with all the books it digitized and various options are discussed. Policy issues are touched on very lightly, other than the books added to the digital collection are largely those which are not protected by copyright law.

Rich presentations on ebooks and library collections. User studies, preservation, rights, future role of library, etc.

"E-books could transform teaching and study. Collections are growing steadily but no in-depth user studies have yet been carried out. Chris Armstrong, Ray Lonsdale and Dave Nicholas introduce the SuperBook Project that aims to put that right."

Springer's digital STM collection: "* More than 3,500 New eBooks and eReference Works Every Year * Ownership Business Model * Unlimited Simultaneous Use * Over 27,000 eBooks Available " Claims to provide full integration into catalog and usage stats

"The prospect of ubiquitous digitization will not change the fundamental relationships among scholarship, academic libraries, and publication. Collaboration across time and space, which is a principal mechanism of scholarship, ought to be enhanced. Reforms in copyright law will be required if the promise of digitization is to be realized; absent such reform, there is a serious risk that much academically valuable material will become invisible and unused. Ubiquitous digitization will change radically the economics that have supported university-based collections of published material. Scholars and scholarly institutions (including libraries and university presses) must assert vigorously claims of fair use and openness."

"Libraries have warned that the rise of digital publishing may make it harder or even impossible to access items in their collections in the future."