There is great hope that these rapidly maturing discovery products will not only promote information literacy strategies but also deliver what metasearch (or federated search) has failed to achieve—a Google-like interface that provides a fast, single point of entry to an institution’s relevant and vetted scholarly content. However, at the moment, even as libraries are struggling to reestablish themselves as a compelling place to start research, the three constituencies—libraries, content providers, and discovery service vendors—cannot even agree on a common vocabulary to describe what they do.
Ingram to Offer MyiLibrary Ebook Platform to Public Libraries in September | ALA Annual 2012
Ingram Content Group, one of the dominant players in the academic ebook market with its MyiLibrary platform, has been gearing up for several months to introduce MyiLibrary to the public library market. The launch date is scheduled for September, but Ingram will be demonstrating how it is tailoring the platform to serve the public library channel at the American Library Association annual conference this week in Anaheim (booth #1446).
Moving Beyond the NetLibrary Legacy, EBSCO Reshapes Its Ebook Platform
When EBSCO acquired NetLibrary from OCLC in March 2010, it obtained a fully formed ebook platform that already had a large collection of about 200,000 ebooks from 500 publishers available in 17,000 sites worldwide. The challenge was to smooth out this platform, now known as Ebooks on EBSCOhost, so that it could migrate to the EBSCO interface and there be remade.
A Primer on Ebooks for Libraries Just Starting With Downloadable Media
COSLA believes that ebooks will be the preferred format for reading materials in the future. As a result, it has set a goal for all U.S. public libraries to offer ebooks and downloadable media by 2015. As a step in that direction, LJ is publishing a series of articles that closely examines the various ebook platforms available, including this environmental scan.
Freading, the Ebook Sibling of Freegal, Shows Signs of Rapid Growth
Licensing Issue Pulls the Plug on Librarian’s Online Newsstand
EBSCO Unveils Android App
EBSCO released a free Android version of its EBSCOhost app this week, following on its iPhone/iPad app, which was released in March. The app lets users access EBSCOhost content on both Android phones and tablets.
Ebook Marketplace Q&A: Scott Wasinger, EBSCO Publishing
The next big innovation to impact the ebook landscape should be broad availability of text books in electronic format once a business model is reached that publishers can be comfortable with. In the meantime, consolidation of eBook companies and increasing competition is driving innovations for better eBook products and services for libraries.