Review of Patron-Driven Acquisitions: History and Best Practices
This book, written in 2011, covers the history, current status and future promise of Patron-Driven Acquisition. Named book of the week by Against the Grain, it includes contributions from well-respected industry leaders.
Rick Anderson, Associate Dean for Scholarly Resources & Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, USA has reviewed Patron-Driven Acquisitions: History and Best Practices:
Overall, Patron-driven Acquisitions can be confidently recommended to all academic libraries—both those currently planning
to move in a patron-driven direction, and those unsure of whether such an approach makes sense or perhaps even of what all
the fuss is about. Its authors effectively cover all of the most pressing and relevant questions about PDA theory and practice, and offer highly useful tools to readers interesting in assessing the practice’s viability and likely consequences.
Download Rick Anderson’s full review - Rick Anderson Review on Patron-Driven Acquisitions: History and Best Practices
Read the full text online version in Library Review - http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=17062626&show=html
For more information on Patron-Driven Acquisitions: History and Best Practices, go to http://blog.eblib.com/?p=5429
To purchase a copy of this book - add to your collection on the EBL Platform, buy from De Gruyter or from various library suppliers and bookstores.
For more information on Patron-Driven Acquisition/Demand-driven Acquisition or EBL, please contact us and we will happily help. Email info@eblib.com
Patron-Driven Acquisitions: History and Best Practices
Edited by David A. Swords
Released by De Gruyter at Frankfurt Book Fair last week, and already named ‘Book of the Week’ by Against the Grain, this book is a must read for librarians and publishers alike. With contributions from well-respected industry leaders - Rick Lugg, Bob Nardini, Michael Levine-Clark, Kari Paulson, Rex Steiner and Ron Berry, Tom Corbett, Sue Polanka and Emilie Delquie, Doug Way and Julie Garrison, Dennis Dillon, and David Swords – this book provides excellent, thought-provoking discussion and analysis of the increasingly popular acquisition model. We highly recommend this book!
In helping ebooks to become even more accessible, EBL now supports the download of ebooks on Android devices, through the freely available Bluefire Reader app.
Similar to how the site works for iPhone users, EBL detects the user’s operating system and automatically offers the option to download the ebook to Bluefire Reader. Bluefire Reader supports EPUB and PDF formats, and requires Android 2.2 and up. Bluefire is a free app that supports Adobe Digital Editions DRM and enables you to add ebooks and files from multiple sources.
EBL offers more than 30,000 ePub files, specifically formatted for an optimised reading experience on small screens.
EPUB format offers users optimised reading experience on ebook readers, iPhones and iPads…
EBL now supports the EPUB standard. Nearly 30,000 new EPUB format ebooks have been added to the EBL platform this week, offering EBL users an optimized reading experience when downloading ebooks to ebook readers, iPhones and iPads. EBL has enabled users to download ebooks from the platform since it’s launch in 2004, however, now whenever EPUB files are available they are served out in place of the standard PDF files. As the EPUB files are designed to ‘re-flow’ to fit the size of the screen, they provide a more reader-friendly format for EBL compatible mobile devices.
More than 375 of EBL’s publishers are supplying EPUB standard files - some delivering only a few titles so far, but others starting to produce EPUB as standard ebook format. Allen & Unwin, Elsevier, John Wiley, Oxford University Press, Princeton University Press and The World Bank are some of the publishers who are already providing a substantial lists of titles in EPUB format. We expect this list to continue to grow.
EPUB became an official standard of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) in September 2007. EPUB is designed for reflowable content, meaning that the text display can be optimized for use on disparate reading devices and applications. The standard has been widely adopted across the trade publishing community and has more recently worked its way into the academic publishers’ workflow.
“As EBL enabled downloading of ebooks from product’s beginning, EPUB is just a next step toward enhancing the ebook reading experience,” explains Kari Paulson, EBL’s President. ”We are pleased to be one of the first academic ebook aggregators to make use of the EPUB format and eagerly await further adoption across the academic publishing community.”
Libraries wishing to know more about this development or to receive a list of EPUB enabled titles should contact support@eblib.com. A formal press release is available here.
Report from Sydney e-textbook forum in Sydney
Sponsored by James Bennett and EBL
On January 31, 2011, EBL and James Bennett organised a forum for librarians and publishers in Sydney to discuss some of the issues surrounding e-textbooks. The event was a resounding success with a packed out room, filled with both interested and eager publishers and librarians and produced a very thoughtful discussion and lively debate. The Bookseller & Publisher magazine published a summary of the forum, written by Rachael McDiarmid from James Bennett, in their April 2011.
Six or seven years ago the answer to our request for e-texts was a resounding “no way” but in this digital age it’s become a case of saying “I hear you, but…”, “when it happens, not if it happens” and more recently “how are we going to make this work?”. As you can appreciate, there are many issues: from the role everyone plays in the traditional book supply chain to multiple user access models in libraries, print sales cannibalisation, piracy, DRM, and most of all pricing models.
The full article, and the presentation slides are available for download here.
View Summary
View Forum Slides
Libraries and publishers have volunteered to participate in a trial, set for later this year. A task force group will be meeting soon to construct a few e-textbook models and deliverables to guide the pilot.
Libraries wishing to sign on to the task force can register their interest at http://eepurl.com/dkCGU. Or, please feel free to contact EBL or James Bennett for more information.
How We Read Now
Ebooks Corp recently launched AMIGO READER, a new social networking site devoted to bringing readers together. Although it comes from the team that brought you eBooks.com and EBL, it’s not really about ebooks – it’s about books (in whatever form they’re published) and their authors and readers.
The EBL team are looking at innovative ways we can integrate the some Amigo Reader’s social networking and collaborative tools into and around our ebooks. We’ve got some great ideas, such as:
Using shared notes to enable instructors or anyone to annotate an ebook and then share their annotated version of the book with students or peers.- Pulling in blog, wiki and news information into the full-record view of the book
- Letting users add reviews, tags and other personal information around a text
But these are just a few of our thoughts. We’d love to hear what you think once you’ve had a snoop around. Do you see any tools or features that would be especially appealing in an academic or research environment?
We encourage you to have a look and send us your thoughts…
>> To join Amigo Reader visit www.amigoreader.com.
>> To see a book online in the eB20 Reader, go to 
www.amigoreader.com/moonstone
About Amigo Reader:
Amigo Reader is a response to the new web 2.0 landscape, enabling you to:
- Start reading any of thousands of books online.
- Easily create and update a catalogue: “books I own”, “books I’ve lent”, “books I’ve read”, “my wish-list”, “sociology references”…
- Follow news and discussions about your favorite publications, authors or genres.
- Find members whose interests or reading tastes match your own.
- Join or create an online (or neighborhood) reading and discussion group.
- Collaborate with colleagues or class-members around a book or set of books.
- Buy an ebook version or order a hardcopy of any book you want.
- Plan Live Chat sessions in or around the book. You can also read transcripts of previous Live Chat sessions with popular authors.
The Amigo Reader site and the online reader are tightly integrated; for example, if you begin a discussion inside a book, it can be continued outside the book on the Amigo Reader website. Amigo Reader features dedicated channels for authors and publishers. Authors and publishers have unique rights and tools to enable them to set up online events and edit their own dedicated zones.
We are receiving a growing number of inquiries regarding EBL’s compatibility with ebook reading devices. With all of the hype and opinions about various readers, we understand that making a decision about which ebook reading device is right for you can be a little overwhelming. To help cut through the ‘noise’, we have found a handy list of devices that are compatible with EBL ebooks (via Adobe Digital Editions). Adobe Digital Editions is supported by a majority of the reading devices out there, giving EBL users a range of choice of readers.
View the list of eBook Readers here
Note that prices vary and suitability depends on the context in which the reading device is being used. Not all readers are available worldwide and this list identifies availability by geography.
Is your library using or thinking of using eBook Readers in the library? Let us know what your thoughts are on ebook readers for institutions. We are interested to hear about innovative projects carried out by libraries.
We all hear the question raised ‘why aren’t ebooks much cheaper than their counterparts?’. Gordon Haff, principal IT adviser at Illuminata, discusses this very topic in his CNET article ‘Why e-books aren’t cheaper?’. Here, Haff clearly breaks-down the costs involved in publishing and distributing ebooks compared to print books. The writer acknowledges that one may or may not agree with the details or his conclusion, but Haff does present a good starting-point for discussion.
I know this post went into a lot of detail, but when you’re talking about business models and pricing, it is important to actually run the numbers. One can dispute fundamental assumptions behind those numbers of course, but at least they give a starting point.
There is often a lot of talk about the potential of the ebook format to enhance the reading experience and make it more interactive through inclusion of links, audio, video and other embedded media. It’s very exciting to see one publisher actually stepping into this brave new world. Random House announced today the release of ‘enhanced’ or ‘premium’ ebooks…
The Random House Group is today launching the first list of ‘enhanced’ ebooks to be released by a major UK publisher. Announced on the first day of the annual London Book Fair, ‘Book and Beyond’ explores the opportunities and new reading experiences which the digital format can offer to book lovers and new readers alike.
The enhanced ebooks offer readers a range of additional content such as videos, games, quizzes, photos, author interviews, interactive graphics and the option to listen to or read the text at the start of each chapter. The initial list of ten enhanced ebooks includes titles from popular authors such as James Patterson, Danny Wallace and Derren Brown. More enhanced ebooks from Irvine Welsh, Katie Price and other bestselling authors are planned for later this year.
You can view the full announcement here - http://www.booktrade.info/index.php/showarticle/20808
