Illinois Digital Academic Library and NetLibrary to Provide eBooks to the State’s Students and Faculty Anywhere, Any Time

The Illinois Digital Academic Library (IDAL) today announced an agreement with NetLibrary Inc. to provide eBooks to students, faculty, and staff affiliated with 155 academic libraries throughout the state of Illinois. eBooks are electronic versions of published books that library patrons can browse, search, borrow, read, and return over the Internet.

IDAL, established in September 1999, is a new project, supported by the Illinois Board of Higher Education, to assist all of Illinois’ academic libraries in meeting the rapidly growing demand for electronic resources. Boulder, Colo.-based NetLibrary is a leading provider of eBooks to academic, corporate, public, and special libraries. Founded in August 1998, NetLibrary has forged alliances with more than 230 publishers, has created a digital collection of more than 20,000 academic, reference, scholarly, and trade eBooks, and provides eBooks and content management services to more than 700 libraries.

The agreement calls for approximately 1,500 eBooks to be made available to the patrons of participating IDAL libraries. Those libraries also may choose to purchase eBooks directly from NetLibrary to create their own digital collections.

"Through our agreement with NetLibrary, IDAL will give many Illinois academic libraries their first experience with electronic monographs," said Tom Dorst, director of the IDAL project. "Students and faculty will now be able to search, review, and check out eBooks any hour of the day or night in the library, in their offices or dorms, and from their home computers."

The collection to be distributed through IDAL includes academic, reference, and scholarly titles in the subject areas of Business, Consumer Health and Medicine, Computers and Information Technology, and General Reference. Titles have been selected for their currency from prominent publishers such as Harvard Business School Publishing, Houghton Mifflin Company, McGraw-Hill, and O'Reilly & Associates. Participating libraries also will have access to NetLibrary's collection of more than 3,600 public domain eBooks.

Library patrons may use eBooks at terminals in the campus library and in other locations connected to the campus network, or they may log in to the eBook collection from their home computers through an Internet connection. eBooks can be browsed by subject or searched by keyword, title, author, and subject. Patrons may preview eBooks and check them out of their libraries for a period of time set by IDAL. At the end of the checkout period, eBooks are returned automatically. Patrons may print a limited number of pages and copy selected text from eBooks, but NetLibrary's copyright protection technology prevents eBooks from being printed in their entirety or from being copied and distributed over the Internet.

"We are pleased to be working with IDAL to offer eBooks to academic libraries in Illinois," said NetLibrary Executive Vice President of Sales Rich Rosy. "eBooks bring a whole new level of access and convenience to the library setting. We feel confident that eBooks will become an integral part of research for many students."

About IDAL
The goal of the Illinois Digital Academic Library initiative is to provide a high quality collection of full text and image digitized resources that supports instruction, study, and research by students, faculty and staff in all eligible Illinois higher education institutions. IDAL provides resources and services to 155 public and private academic libraries serving over 750,000 students and faculty. The Illinois Board of Higher Education funds IDAL for the benefit of the statewide academic community.

NetLibrary Inc.
(www.NetLibrary.com) is a leading provider of eBooks and Internet-based content/collection management services. NetLibrary has established relationships with more than 230 publishers of trade, academic, reference, and scholarly books, and has created digital versions of more than 20,000 titles. NetLibrary hosts and manages eBook collections for more than 700 public, academic, corporate, and special libraries.

Contact:
Thomas J. Dorst
IDAL
(217) 206-7856
tdorst@uillinois.edu
NetLibrary

Brian Bell (NetLibrary)
(303) 381-8703
bbell@NetLibrary.com