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OCLC PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

NetLibrary: a flavorful blend of services

The world’s leading provider of eBooks moves into audio books, expands its collection, looks to the future as eContent provider

By Tom Storey

Five years ago, a group of Colorado-based entrepreneurs ushered in the eBook era by rolling out the first catalog of electronic books to the library world. The new, 2,000-title collection used advanced technology tailored for library operations and generated a lot of excitement throughout the library community as the most promising experiment in eBooks.

Today, NetLibrary remains on top of the eBook world. More than 12,000 libraries in 41 countries have purchased and are making eBooks available to their users, and usage is growing daily, as is evidenced by the fact that more than eight million pages are viewed, on average, every month. The collection has grown to 75,000 titles from 450 publishers, offering academic, public and special libraries a wide and growing variety of content.

As part of a foreign language initiative, Spanish and French titles are being added, and talks are underway with Chinese and other foreign language publishers. Another milestone in technology is here—the audiobook. And the groundwork is being laid for the future as a premier eContent provider.

Following are enhancements that NetLibrary has made to its eBook service over the last year:

Audiobooks

Coming this fall, a new audiobooks program will feature the best-selling audio titles from the leading audio book publishers. NetLibrary is developing an innovative program that will allow library users to easily download audio titles from their library’s NetLibrary Web site. Initially, the new audio collection will feature bestsellers, classics, book club favorites, award winning authors, foreign language tutorials and more. Audio books add a new dimension to the NetLibrary collection, integrate seamlessly into the NetLibrary interface and allow users to download files for playback on desktop, laptop and Pocket PC devices compatible with Windows Media Player.

Popular materials

Over the past several months, NetLibrary has added more than 200 titles for general interest content from 20 publishers, including Harper Collins, Penguin and John Wiley and Sons. This content is aimed at public library users but can benefit anyone needing basic information in eBook format on business, careers, cooking, law, education, families, health, travel and many other topics.

Highlights of some of the 2004 imprints:

  • Career resources from JIST Publishing like Best Jobs for the 21st Century, America’s Top 101 Computer and Technical Jobs and Gallery of Best Résumés.

  • Popular legal resources from Nolo, including A Legal Guide for Lesbian and Gay Couples, Using Divorce Mediation: Save Your Money & Your Sanity and The Executor’s Guide: Settling a Loved One’s Estate or Trust.

  • Thirty titles in the cooking series from Lerner Publications, including Cooking the Cuban Way, Cooking the North African Way, Cooking the Polish Way and Cooking the Indian Way.

  • More than 80 travel guides from Frommers and 18 business travel guides from Axiom Press.

  • General interest titles ranging from personal finance to specific trades from McGraw-Hill, such as Understanding Stocks, Tips and Traps When Buying a Home, and Countdown to Spanish: Learn to Communicate in 24 Hours.

Subject-specific collections

NetLibrary has launched the start of several subject centers, designed to bring together key titles in highdemand subject areas that can be easily located and accessed via the NetLibrary site. Libraries can direct users to these subject centers for faster, more direct access to specific topics. A range of titles is available for libraries to pick from in order to customize their subject centers.

  • The NetLibrary IT collection is an online resource for accessing tutorials, user guides, reference resources, technical dictionaries, certification materials and related materials from the world’s leading IT publishers, including Microsoft Press, Sybex, Elsevier and Idea Group Publishing. The collection spans the most critical technology subject areas, such as networking, computer animation, desktop applications and data warehousing.

  • The NetLibrary Reference Center, which was developed with reference librarians, provides more than 600 subject-specific encyclopedias, dictionaries and thesauri to select from, including The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, ready reference materials such as The Scientific American Science Desk Reference and a wide range of bibliographies, directories and guides.

TitleDirect

TitleDirect is a profiling tool that alerts libraries as new eBook content is added to the NetLibrary collection. With TitleDirect, libraries are automatically informed when new titles matching their collection development strategy become available. The notification is based on profiles they have created and is provided on a monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly basis.

Foreign language titles

NetLibrary is actively adding new titles from Spanish publishers, such as Libronauta, E-Libros, Dykinson, Editorial Paidotribo, Siglo XXI and Conexión Gráfica. The 1,100 titles cover Spanish law, sports, health, nutrition, literature and the classics. Spanish children’s books will soon be added, as well as titles on medicine, humanities, sociology and Mexican history. About 300 French titles will soon be added.

The future

In the future, NetLibrary’s core service will remain eBooks, but there will be an effort to provide libraries and library users with a single point of access to eBooks, electronic journals, online databases and special content collections. The goal is to expand the value of the NetLibrary collection by simplifying the library’s ability to provide integrated eContent products and services to their users. For example, library users can link to eBook content directly from the OCLC FirstSearch service, since bibliographic records for all eBook titles were loaded into WorldCat.

By integrating eBooks, eJournals and special content collections, libraries can enhance their catalogs with individual products, or select “bundled offerings” encompassing a range of eContent.

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