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"The University of Michigan Press will be restructured as an academic unit under the aegis of Paul N. Courant, the university's dean of libraries. The idea, according to statement released by Michigan on Friday, is to position the press "to become a pioneer" in digital publishing-to make it a more direct collaborator in the central mission of spreading research "as widely and freely as possible.""

"MyiLibrary™ is Ingram Digital Group's online eBook and eContent resource for academic, medical, professional and corporate libraries the world over. Our unique aggregation platform offers organizations the ability to acquire and access digital content on an individual title, publisher-specific or subject collection basis, based on their unique requirements and resources. With nearly 160,000 titles currently available, covering all major academic disciplines, and an additional 1,000 titles being added weekly, MyiLibrary has the most comprehensive online eContent resource available on the market today. We work with the world's leading commercial publishers including McGraw Hill, John Wiley, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Springer and Elsevier, as well as exclusive access to intergovernmental publications from groups such as The International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization."

"Earlier this week the University of Michigan Press announced it is shifting its center of gravity from print to digital publishing, at least for monographs -- a change that will be reflected in its catalog within two years. It is the shape of things to come. Or rather (given what I've heard at the annual meetings of the Association of American University Presses over the past few years) the shape of what everyone has known is coming for some time now, without quite relishing the prospect."

Audio. "Panelists Helen Tartar, Editorial Director at Fordham University Press; Sanford Thatcher, Director of Penn State University Press and past President of the Association of American University Presses; and Ree DeDonato, Director of Humanities and History and Acting Director of Union Theological Seminary's Burke Library of Columbia University Libraries/Information Services discuss the economics and process of scholarly publishing and the future of the monograph. Columbia's Deputy University Librarian and Associate Vice President for Digital Programs and Technology Services Patricia Renfro introduces the panel, which is followed by a question-and-answer session."

Video: "...discuss the economics and process of scholarly publishing and the future of the monograph. Columbia's Deputy University Librarian and Associate Vice President for Digital Programs and Technology Services Patricia Renfro introduces the panel, which is followed by a question-and-answer session." (quoted from webpage.)

"Andrew Savikas is one of today's most prominent writers, speakers, and thinkers about digital publishing and the e-book revolution. As Vice President of Digital Initiatives at O'Reilly Media and Program Chair of O'Reilly's annual Tools of Change for Publishing conference-a massive three-day industry powwow about publishing technology and business strategy, held last month here in New York City-he keeps his finger pressed steadily to the ever-racing pulse of the digital media world"

Elsevier, a leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical (STM) information, today announced the availability of more than 4,000 eBooks on ScienceDirect. eBooks on ScienceDirect comprise high-quality selected titles published from 1995 to the present. These include scientific and technical books spanning 18 subject areas, as well as books from renowned imprints including Pergamon and Academic Press. The launch is a major expansion to the reference works, handbooks and book series already available on ScienceDirect.

"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."

FULLTEXT SOURCES ONLINE (FSO) (ISSN 1040-8258) is a directory of publications that are accessible online in full text, from 29 major aggregator products. FSO lists 40,231 periodicals, newspapers, newsletters, newswires, and TV or radio transcripts. It covers topics in science, technology, medicine, law, finance, business, industry, the popular press and more. FSO also lists the URLs of publications with Internet archives, noting whether access to them is free or not.

Digital Content: Analyzing Demand in the Postsecondary Education Market Image of Noah Carp Author: Noah Carp, Affiliate Analyst A tectonic shift in content use is underway in postsecondary education. Both content adopters and suppliers are in the early phase of the continuum from 100% print content to a significant role for digital content. As postsecondary instructors and other content decisionmakers are increasingly interested in employing new digital formats to enhance teaching and learning, digital content providers, technology vendors, and other companies involved in bringing digital content to colleges and universities are simultaneously shaping a new higher education environment. The most pressing challenges for companies participating in this market are to assess the market opportunities, understand customer requirements, modify existing business strategies, and bring compelling offerings to the market. This report focuses on the demand-side of the market - faculty use and planned use of digital content. It uses primary research of faculty content adopters to identify perceptions and trends that will help shape supplier strategies for digital content. The report analyzes:

Scholarly Publishing The Electronic Frontier Robin P. Peek and Gregory B. Newby Scholarly publishing is changing and the changes will have an impact on all members of the academic community and on how they will go about creating and maintaining scholarship. Scholarly Publishing: The Electronic Frontier examines the critical issues facing universities, academics, libraries, and scholarly presses in the turbulent time when publishing is likely moving from a print to an electronic paradigm. The essays by all of the major participants in this "electronic revolution" explore the technical, social, and organizational impact of computer-mediated communication. They examine both ends of the continuum and everything in between-from how the system might be completely overhauled to a gradual retrenching where much remains the same but paper is no longer the communication medium. Some of the subjects, implicit in the various possible futures for scholarly publishing and covered here, include the role of the library with respect to electronic publications, protection of intellectual and economic property, and plagiarism.

The scholarly monograph has been compared to the Hapsburg monarchy in that it seems to have been in decline forever! Many publishers, university administrators and academic researchers are still largely wedded to historical and Balkanized Web 1.0 monograph settings. While the ramifications of the fall of the Hapsburg empire are still being felt today in geopolitical terms, university presses can rise phoenix-like through 21st century digital environments and the reworking of scholarly communication frameworks. New e-press developments will provide greater accessibility to scholarly monographic content. Peer-reviewed, digitally constructed monographs, available within open scholarship institutional frameworks, will increasingly be the 2.0 and 3.0 models for scholarly publishing.

CIBER projects Live projects Digital Lives for the Arts & Humanities Research Council (September 2007 to April 2009). Evaluating the Usage and Impact of E-Journals in the UK for the Research Information Network (January to November 2008). UK National E-Books Observatory for JISC Collections (January 2008 to April 2009). Recently completed projects MaxData for the US Institute of Museum & Library Studies. Completed December 2007. SuperBook for a consortium of publishers. Completed December 2007. The Impact of Open Access Journal Publishing II for Oxford University Press. Completed November 2007. The Researcher of the Future for the British Library and JISC. Completed November 2007.

A recent study by Jason Price and John McDonald of Claremont Colleges investigates whether a research library could pursue "paperless acquisition" for newly published books. Price and McDonald compared purchases of print books made by 5 research libraries in 2006 and 2007 to the catalogs 4 of major aggregators of ebooks for libraries (EBrary, NetLibrary, EBookLibrary, and MyILibrary). They found that around 70% of the libraries' print acquisitions are not available through the leading ebook aggregators. According to their preliminary analysis, there is a mismatch between the content that some publishers (such as Routledge and Oxford UP) make available through ebook aggregators and what libraries purchase; also, some university presses do not yet appear to be making their publications available as ebooks. In some disciplines (art, music, romance literatures), over 80% of library purchases are not available electronically, while in other disciplines (economics) only 53% are not available as ebooks.

The expression "tipping point" (with its implication of "point of no return") hardly seems to apply, to judge by this year's Book Expo. A more fitting term might be the one used by Ellen Trachtenberg, a publicist for the University of Pennsylvania Press. "We're at a tension point," she told me. "We don't have any e-books, but our board of trustees is keen on doing them, so we are looking into it."

" 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."