May 9, 2024

Stakeholders Strive to Define Standards for Web-Scale Discovery Systems

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.

EBSCO Announces New Partnerships, Collections

EBSCO Publishing last week announced new or expanded partnership agreements with OCLC, SirsiDynix, and Innovative Interfaces that will enhance discovery and offer easier access to many databases, e-journals and other content.

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

The Freading ebook platform has only been live for about three months, but it is already showing a fairly rapid rate of growth, thanks in part to its low fees and the immediate access it gives libraries to a collection of about 20,000 ebooks on a multi-user, simultaneous basis.

Licensing Issue Pulls the Plug on Librarian’s Online Newsstand

A popular online newsstand devised by a New Hampshire librarian has run afoul of licensing terms and has had to be deactivated at least temporarily.

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

Scott Wasinger, EBSCO

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.