Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

In Lean Times, E-Books Find a Friend: Libraries

See the article in its original context from
February 21, 2002, Section G, Page 3Buy Reprints
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.

ELECTRONIC book publishing may be on the skids, but digital book collections continue to grow at libraries.

In the next few months, patrons of Yale's and Stanford's university libraries, as well as a library system in Northern California, may be surprised to find that their electronic catalogs offer links to digital books. The universities and the Peninsula Library System, a consortium of 34 public and community college libraries in San Mateo County, have decided to jump into the e-book arena.

In January the libraries subscribed to a new service by Ebrary, an information distribution company based in Mountain View, Calif., that will enable them to offer the full text of electronic books to anyone with access to their online catalogs. In the Peninsula system's case, no proof of residency is required to use the catalog, which means that in theory anyone with an Internet connection will have access to e-books starting in March, when the catalog integration is expected to be complete.

By clicking on links that are integrated into the library's own catalog, computer users will be able to read the full text of any book in Ebrary's database, a collection of about 5,000 titles. The system enables people to search electronically through a book and read its pages on the screen, while ultimately encouraging them to check out a physical copy when they want to read it in full. No option is available for downloading the books to portable devices.

The company said it was working with more than 100 publishers, including Random House and McGraw-Hill, and expected to make several thousand more titles available in coming months. So far most of the books are nonfiction titles in the fields of business, education or technology, but a recent deal with Penguin Classics will bring some literature into the mix.

Like most libraries, these institutions have until now offered patrons access to a growing number of online periodicals but only a few electronic books. What sealed the deal, librarians say, is that Ebrary's books, like library books, do not come with a price tag for users. ''You read online and it doesn't cost you anything,'' said Ann Okerson, associate university librarian for collections and technical services at Yale.

To copy or print, however, users must pay a fee that could range from 15 cents to 50 cents a page. (The specific prices are set by the publishers.) At some libraries, including Yale's, users may also be charged for the use of laser printers, although a user could alternatively print the material at home at no charge beyond Ebrary's per-page fee.

With little fanfare, Ebrary also just opened a consumer site with similar services (shop.ebrary.com), where people can buy books instead of borrowing them. But Ebrary officials say they are not heavily promoting the site because their core business is selling to libraries.

Ebrary's foray into the library market comes at a shaky time for producers and distributors of electronic books.

NetLibrary, the first company to get into the business of selling e-books to libraries, filed for bankruptcy last year and was bought out last month by a nonprofit cataloging organization, the OCLC Online Computer Library Center. Questia, a company that has compiled a database of 45,000 e-books, has pared down its staff from just under 300 workers at its height in 2001 to 27 today.

Both companies approached the market differently from the way Ebrary did. NetLibrary required libraries to buy copies of its e-books as if they were buying the physical books, and many librarians said that considering how many they would need to buy to provide a significant service, the price was too high. NetLibrary also specified that only one person could gain access to an e-book at a time, a strategy intended to pacify publishers who feared that too many digital copies would lead to copyright infringement.

Questia, which has focused on attracting individual college students, sells subscriptions to its online database for $19.95 a month, or $12.50 a month with a yearlong subscription. The company has not disclosed the number of subscribers.

Linda Crowe, executive director of the Peninsula Library System, said that regardless of the painful setbacks to some e-book companies, she expected e-books and other electronic resources to become critical components of the average library. Already, she said, the growing selection of online materials at libraries -- including journals, newspaper archives and government documents -- seem to be attracting more patrons, whether they are connecting from home or walking in the door.

''Whenever we get new electronic resources,'' Ms. Crowe said, ''use of the library goes up.''

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section G, Page 3 of the National edition with the headline: In Lean Times, E-Books Find a Friend: Libraries. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT