Notes from GSFC Library's eBooks Discussion I went to a discussion at NASA Goddard today on ebooks. Nathan D. Robertson, co-author of this report on electronic resource management provided the opening lecture. Vendor representatives from ebrary, NetLibrary (OCLC), and Knovel also presented and asked (oops) answered questions.

ebrary
24k titles in the premier academic. Annual subscription but subsets available by subject and also perpetual access available on a per title basis

Knovel
Much smaller collection but what's really cool is how you can analyze the data. They only have the concurrent user and enterprise models

NetLibrary
100k titles, 39 languages, audiobooks. Findable in open worldcat. MARC records. More fields indexed. Buy collections, custom collections, individual titles... Purchase through YBP.

The audience asked some great questions, but the answers weren't as great:

Q: How do we get our users to find these things and use them?
A: OPAC, webpages, they'll give us flyers to hand out (ugh)

Q: Searchable by Google? In Google Print?
A: All - yes (I think just the metadata and not the full text but I'm not sure)

Q: What happens to us if a user tries to abuse the system
A: We get notices, that IP may be blocked, will be unblocked when we resolve the problem

Q: My users still want to print the whole thing out
A: Display technologies are getting better and computers are ubiquitous (ugh)

Q: DRM (argh)
A: From Nathan -- read the licenses v. v. carefully! NetLibrary audiobooks stop working after 3 weeks, then you can renew. ebrary - when you cut and paste it automatically appends citation and hyperlink. All of the ones represented allow some sort of print and cut/paste.

Q: What happens when you stop subscribing?
A: Knovel - turned off. NetLibrary and ebrary - depends on the model, for perpetual they transfer files to you somehow.

There were more, so maybe I'll remember them later and update this.
updated: the presenters *answered* questions, mostly.
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