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MARIAN, THE CYBRARIAN

A recent New York Times article by Lisa Guernsey touts "The Library as the Latest Web Venture." Unlike the electronic book industry, which is geared toward downloading popular new books to handheld readers, electronic library projects "are not about reading at all," says Guernsey. They're about electronic searching. At present, NetLibrary serves libraries that want to give patrons online access to books for limited periods of time. Two new companies, Elibrary.com and Questia Media, are digitizing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted texts and have adopted a different business model. The new companies' huge databases will be searchable for free, with individuals paying modest fees to view, copy, and/or print selected pages. Publishers support the projects because they will receive royalties each time a work is viewed, and academic librarians hope that downloading online snippets will lead students to borrow actual books. As a result, Ebrary.com expects to have up to 600,000 volumes in its database when it opens this fall, while Questia’s more modest goal is to digitize 250,000 books over the next three years.

Mon, 19 Jun 2000 09:06:22 -0700

Submitted by: Lois Ambash