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netlibrary catalog grows to more than 40,000 titles
DUBLIN, Ohio, Jan 19, 2002-NetLibrary™, the leading provider of eBooks to the
institutional library market, announced achievement of a major milestone in the
eBook industry at the ALA Midwinter Conference. The NetLibrary catalog now
offers academic, public, special, and school libraries access to more than
40,200 copyrighted eBook titles, nearly double it's size from a year ago.
"The newest content additions further strengthen NetLibrary's catalog of eBooks in the high-demand
subject areas of Economics and Business, Medicine, Health, Wellness, Education,
Technology, Engineering, and Computer Science," said Rich Rosy, NetLibrary
Executive Vice President of Sales and Publishing. He went on to say, "We wish to acknowledge and express our
appreciation to all our library customers and publishing partners who continue to
reinforce the relevance of eBooks for libraries and their benefits to
patrons. Customers such as: the University of Florida, California State
University, Grambling State University, Minitex, Palinet, Open University of
Hong Kong, among others, have continued to build their collections in recent
months, while publishing partners such as McGraw-Hill, Taylor &
Francis, ABC-CLIO, Lawrence Erlbaum, University of California Press, Peter Lang
Publishing, and Opera Journeys, among others, have continued to provide a
steady flow of new content", said Rosy.
Evidence of the growing acceptance of eBooks for research and reference purposes was
also presented at the ALA Midwinter Conference by NetLibrary's Vice President
of Research and Library Services, Lynn Connaway, Ph.D., who summarized two
studies on eBook usage and costs relative to print books. NetLibrary's research suggests that the
average number of accesses for all eBook titles across libraries of all types
is three times annually, with some customers seeing titles being accessed, on
average, five to seven times annually. The most popular titles, or titles held in reserve to support specific
course work, may register accesses as high as several hundred times.
Exploration of session length and time in a book, which averages 15-20 minutes
each, heavily reinforces eBook benefits for patrons using them as research and
reference tools, speeding their ability to locate needed content across
multiple titles in minutes. In a related finding, the NetLibrary research also suggested that when a library
owns the same collection in both eBook and print book formats, a higher
percentage of eBooks are used.
eBooks are full-text electronic versions of published books
that library patrons can search, borrow, read, and return via the
Internet. With NetLibrary eBooks, users
can access library resources anywhere, anytime, and perform full-text searches
across hundreds of books or within a specific book to speed research and reference
projects. These books can be viewed
online from a library, office, home, or remote location using an Internet
browser. Added benefits include an
embedded dictionary in each book with accompanying visuals and verbal
pronunciation, as well as hyperlinks from the table of contents
and index. eBooks are available for
varying checkout periods and are automatically checked back into
the library collection when the checkout period expires.
Future plans for NetLibrary include becoming part of the OCLC Cooperative. On Jan. 11,
2002, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court approved the final sale of NetLibrary assets to
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, subject to a 10-day appeal period. The sale includes both the eBook Division
and the MetaText eTextbook Divisions of NetLibrary.
Headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit
organization that provides computer-based cataloging, reference, resource
sharing and preservation services to 41,000 libraries in 82 countries and
territories. OCLC was founded in 1967 to improve access to the world's information
and reduce information costs, and conducts ongoing research to develop technologies
to support that mission. Forest Press, a division of OCLC since 1988,
publishes the Dewey Decimal Classification system.
In the United States, more information is available (via telephone: +1-614-764-6000 or
1-800-848-5878; fax: +1-614-764-6096;
or e-mail: oclc@oclc.org). In Europe,
the Middle East and Africa, contact the OCLC Europe office, located in
Birmingham, United Kingdom (phone: +44 121 456 4656; fax: +44 121 456 4680; or
e-mail: europe@oclc.org). In Asia
and the Pacific region, contact the OCLC Asia Pacific office in Dublin, Ohio
(phone: +1-614-764-6189; fax: +1-614-764-4331; or e-mail:
asia_pacific@oclc.org). In Canada, contact the OCLC Canada office in
Montreal, Quebec (phone: +1-450-658-6583 or 1-888-658-6583; fax: +1-450-658-6231;
or e-mail: canada@oclc.org). In Latin America and the Caribbean, contact
the OCLC Latin America and the Caribbean office in Dublin, Ohio
(phone: +1-614-761-5196; fax: +1-614-718-1026; or e-mail:
america_latina@oclc.org).
More information about OCLC and OCLC regional service providers is available at
http://www.oclc.org/.
NetLibrary www.NetLibrary.com is
the leading provider of eBooks and Internet-based content management services
for the institutional library market. NetLibrary develops, hosts, maintains and preserves eBook collections
for academic, corporate, public, and school libraries. Thousands of libraries throughout the United
States and internationally are currently providing NetLibrary eBooks to their
patrons. The MetaText Division www.MetaText.com
of NetLibrary creates, hosts and manages web-based digital textbooks for
leading textbook publishers. MetaText
digital textbooks provide instructors and students with a full range of
interactive teaching, collaborating and learning tools.
Contact:
Nita Dean
+1-614-761-5002
nita_dean@oclc.org
Marge Gammon
+1-303-381-8799
mgammon@netlibrary.com
Dewey, Dewey Decimal Classification, Forest Press and OCLC are registered trademarks of OCLC.
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