Ebrary

Ed has asked me to follow up on an email from an Ebrary rep requesting a meeting at ALA. So I scheduled an appointment for an Ebrary demo. Ebrary's Academic Complete Collection has 25,000 ebook titles from 200 publishers. The CEO is the son of the man who started Adobe so the ebooks are PDF files converted into a proprietary format called EDF. It's different from PDF in that the files are more interactive and can be integrated with other resources such as online reference sources. 40 pages can be printed per login. Users can create Ebrary profiles that allow them to set up a bookshelf and make notes in the book.

Ebrary requires a plugin to read the files since book pages are streamed from the Ebrary server instead of being downloaded to the user's computer. They supply MARC records for all of the titles in the collection.

Ebrary is available for an annual subscription based on the number of student FTE. The pricing is roughly $2.00 per FTE so, for us, around $27,000 per year. The subscription does include updates as new titles are added to the collection. The also have subject collections with a fixed number of titles.

It was a timely demo because at CBG the other day we discussed issues relating to reserves and collection development. Some instructors want us to purchase multiple copies of class textbooks so students don't have to buy them. But reserves can't function as the campus textbook supplier. Ebooks were discussed as a model since one ebook title could be used by many students. Ebrary allows for unlimited access to titles. 100 students could look at the same book simultaneously. I'm planning to follow up on a campus demo.