Bundles of Books, Part 2

We had little experience with e-books before we reviewed them in our last column (LJ netConnect, 10/15/03, p. 28ff.), although we did have some well-established prejudices—and in the process our eyes were opened. E-books are not some fanciful format that publishers hope will catch on among thrill-seeking librarians. They are carefully conceived, niche products with great potential to help librarians meet their users' needs. Of the titles reviewed here—Gale Virtual Reference, Gutenberg-e, History Reference E-books from ABC-CLIO, netLibrary, Oxford Scholarship Online, Reference Universe, Safari Tech Books Online, and Wiley InterScience Online-books—only OCLC's netLibrary and Reference Universe stand as sort of general-purpose products.

Most of these e-book sites are relatively open to nonsubscribers. Free access to full text, obviously, is off limits, but anyone may view title lists, obtain pricing information, study online documentation, conduct searches, and review results lists. Publishers want to promote the unique and specialized information they have to offer, now available 24/7.

This is an area where new products seem to be springing up overnight. In fact, two of the resources here—Gale Virtual Reference and Oxford Scholarship Online—were not available when we reviewed ACLS History E-Book Project, Books24X7, BookSource: Nonfiction, ebrary Academic Complete, Knovel, Oxford Reference Online: The Core, and xreferplus in the Fall 2003 netConnect.

Content The Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) is hot off the presses—or the electronic equivalent—and it will prove to be a valuable addition to the ever-growing list of e-book services. The product delivers access to reference sources as individual titles via the subscribing institution's web OPAC, as well as via a customized database collection (if a library or school purchases multiple titles) that is beneficial for cross-title searching. The trial site includes about 20 titles, and Gale representatives state that GVRL is initially offering more than 130 Gale and other imprint sources, including encyclopedias, almanacs, and series.

GVRL content covers a diversity of subjects, e.g., Arts, Biography, Business, Education & Careers, General Reference, History, Law & Government, Literature, Medicine, Multicultural Studies, Nation & World, Religion & Philosophy, Science, Medicine & Environment, and Social Science.

The title list is available online, along with expected availability dates. In 2004 we will see not only 170+ encyclopedias and the like coming online but 20+ directories such as Gale Directory of Databases and Who's Who Among African Americans. A directories interface will be available in late 2004 or early 2005.

Institutions can purchase one or multiple e-books, with the flexibility to develop collections based on needs and population served. Features include unlimited usage, 24/7 remote access, MARC records, usage reports, links to related content within an e-book and external web sites, page number indicators, results delivered at the article/entry level, "InfoMarks" for persistent linking, illustration lists with links to the entry, and complete printing options. Gale will customize various portions of the interface based on the selections customers have made in terms of the content purchased, including the List of Sources, "Browse Sources" list, "Subject Area" limit, and "Audience" limit. Content is provided in HTML, PDF (if available), and Open e-book (OEB) format.

Searchability When searchers enter the database via an "About this e-book" link from their library's OPAC, the opening page displays basic information about the source such as subject content and a brief description. This screen also serves as a starting point by providing links to search within the e-book, browse the index, any appendixes, and an electronically generated list of illustrations (the illustration titles are linked to the e-book articles with the image).

We searched the individual title Child Development via this method. Using Gale's familiar InfoTrac interface, we were impressed with the overall uncluttered appearance and ease with which we could navigate from one display to another. We browsed the e-TOC, which can be expanded, with each higher-level entry opening up for greater precision and relevant searching

We selected "mental disorders" from the list on the e-TOC. The article citation included the original pagination; the document in HTML; a link to the PDF format; an MLA-style citation, including the persistent URL; several "See Also's" linked to chapters on antisocial behavior, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and autism; and a substantial list of additional index terms, with hyperlinks to other articles within Child Development. Most of the articles we examined included links to external web sites, which come with a disclaimer that they are "reviewed and selected by a team of Internet researchers using specified editorial criteria." We gave high marks to the quality and authority of sites selected.

Other search options via the GVRL interface include a "Basic Search," using keyword, article/entry title, or source. The results may be sorted by article title, source, or relevance. Users can also create a mark list of results for emailing or printing that can be retained throughout the session. The "Advanced Search" mode offers users more precise options, with a variety of limiting features.

Price Pricing is based on FTE or population served, number of sites, etc., and includes an annual access fee, as well as the one-time purchase fee per title. Access fees range from $50 a year for one to ten titles, up to a maximum of $300 a year for 50 or more titles. Free trials are available.

Who Needs It? Numerous adjustments are in store, but the interface is sound. GVRL provides an ideal way to offer either a small collection in new subject areas or, more likely, material that is so popular librarians will want to provide simultaneous use. The features are numerous, and navigation is straightforward, yet the system can be tailored to satisfy the most sophisticated researcher. The persistent URLs allow faculty to integrate text into their syllabi, and reference departments will be pleased with both the presentation of material and the flexibility of use.

Content Gutenberg-e is a fledgling e-book collection produced by Columbia University Press in collaboration with the American Historical Association. The nine titles in the database (as of mid-November 2003) and the dozen or so being added were selected via the same rigorous peer-review process that scholarly print monographs undergo. They are further distinguished by the creative application of technologies that enhance the contents of each book in ways that conventional print publications can't match (i.e., with images, audio, video, and hyperlinks to supplementary literature as well as to useful and relevant web sites). The electronic format also permits authors to incorporate more extensive documentation than most print publications can practically support.

The Gutenberg-e catalog includes historical monographs on Africa, South Asia, colonial Latin America, Europe before 1800, North America before 1900, military history, and the history of foreign relations.

Searchability Readers may use the Search button on the Gutenberg-e homepage to search the whole database or browse the titles. Clicking on the first title—A Field of Honor: Writers, Court Culture and Public Theater in French Literary Life from Racine to the Revolution—takes the reader to a table of contents page. Four icons appear in the upper left corner, indicating that images, an archive, web resources, and a glossary supplement the text. (Other Gutenberg-e books included QuickTime video, figures and tables, appendixes, and translations.)

The images link leads to a chapter-by-chapter annotated listing of the images the author associates with his work. The images themselves are linked from here. The archive link makes the researcher's lifer easier by connecting to transcriptions of relevant documents. Web resources include general links to online sources for French literary e-texts, academic web resources on early modern French theater, scholarly organizations and institutions such as libraries, and scholarly web sites for French culture and history. The chapter links connect primarily to sources of e-texts for the authors and dramatists—Corneille's Oeuvres completes, for example—analyzed in the text. Chapter heading hyperlinks bring the reader to the text where there are embedded elements like thumbnail images and hyperlinks to web resources.

Clicking on the Search button while within A Field of Honor causes a simple search box to pop up. The Inktomi search engine ranks results by relevancy and lets the searcher Find Similar items. It supports phrase searching with quotation marks, the require (+) or reject (-) operators, and case match. Searching on "moliere" produced an annotated results list of 19 documents. But when we attempted to "Search these results" by typing in the term "engraving" there were no results despite the term appearing several times in the annotated results list. Ultimately the strategy "+moliere +engraving" proved successful, although this demands more search savvy on the user's part than we like in a resource. Output options include printing chapters or sections of books in PDF format.

Price Subscriptions to Gutenberg-e are available for just $195 annually, which gives an institution unlimited campuswide access. Consortial pricing is also available. Individuals may purchase any of the e-books for $49.50, which gives them access to the full text and supplementary materials in perpetuity.

Who Needs It? The world of scholarly communication needs it. We were impressed that Columbia University Press has created a new outlet for scholarly publication that embraces new technologies, and we would expect the academic community to embrace such a resource wholeheartedly.

Content ABC-CLIO's History Reference E-books, one of the more established e-book services, offers purchase options for over 300+ e-books through an unlimited simultaneous access program available 24/7. Nearly 90 additional titles will be added during 2004. Initially presenting titles via netLibrary (still an option), the company launched its own interface and purchase model last year. Once a book has been purchased, several hosting options (self, three-, and seven-year) exist. Similar to other models we previewed, patrons can open an e-book from a link in the catalog or from the vendor's web site, and faculty and staff can link directly to an e-book via an online syllabus, course software, or e-reserve. Titles published from 1991 forward are available as e-books (the majority since 2000), and all titles published after January 2003 are available in both print and e-book formats (institutions can elect to purchase both formats at a reduced cost). Content is provided in HTML in accordance with OEB format rules.

Fees are determined by whether an institution has ABC-CLIO mount the titles on its server, and for how long. Each of the three options includes specified terms and associated costs. For example, those choosing the self-hosting method have the OEB and/or XML book files transferred with no additional fees, but self-hosting requires that a specialized e-book display engine be built, implemented, and managed. The seven-year hosting option includes a fee of 30 percent of the e-book list price; at the end of the first hosting term, institutions can renew for an additional three years for 12 percent of the original e-book list price, or elect to move to a self-hosting option. Additional three-year periods are available for the same price. The three-year scheme has a slightly different fee schedule. In addition to 24/7 remote access, unlimited usage, MARC records, and Merriam-Webster Online, institutions can access usage statistics.

Searchability The vendor's site will display all purchased titles in the center of the welcoming screen, as well as a Subject Collection list on the left-hand frame if numerous titles are owned. This list includes American History, Contemporary World Issues, Cultural Geography, Education, Environment, Folklore & Mythology, Government & Politics, Law, Military Studies, Popular Culture, Religion, Science & Technology, Society, Social Issues & Family, Wars, and World History. Although currently we were only able to search the contents of an individual title, the opportunity to search across the collection should soon be available.

Each individual e-book displays with a linked e-TOC in the left frame and textual content in the center of the screen. Chapters can be expanded for individual subsection viewing, and navigational aids move users through the book page by page or to a specific page. The interface offers tabs for TOC, Search, Notes (which can be bookmarked for later retrieval), and Dictionary. The Note (or Bookmark) feature is a valuable tool if students are using a series of books for a specific project. Note not only links the user to the desired section of the book but can also be edited with specific details and notations for later retrieval.

Many e-book entries have hyperlinked terms, subheadings, and notes with web site URLs. Students receive a bonus: the Cite button at the top of each page produces citation examples. A top frame shows users where they are in the book by chapter, section, and subsection.

We were initially slightly thrown off by the way some e-books displayed, although that improved with use. Depending on monitor resolution and the title there is a lot of white space on the screen. Often the text would extend further down the screen, and we were told white space is necessary to accommodate images. It was often difficult not only to read the text but also to keep track of where we were in the article, even when using a full-screen mode option. Sentences and paragraphs often end mid-screen, and headings do not follow from page to page. Encyclopedia-style entries were easier to follow because they were more concise—the sourcebooks and handbooks took time. An ABC-CLIO contact explained that they are undergoing consumer testing of numerous features, specifically layout and navigation. One concept being tested is the reloading of encyclopedia articles so the entire entry can be displayed.

The "Search" tab allowed us to enter simple words and phrases as well as complex search options, including Boolean logic, wildcards (* and ?), and a list of special characters for "regular expressions." Search results displayed number of times and pages where our query was found; pages with the most search terms first. The search default is "Exact word(s)," but users can select the "All forms of the word(s)" option as well.

Price Contact ABC-CLIO for hosting options and fee details. Free trials available.

Who Needs It? This service offers features that will appeal beyond those institutions that typically purchase ABC-CLIO reference material. The 24/7, simultaneous-use model is an attractive concept and will surely change what libraries acquire and how they disseminate information. Integrating an engine for searching across the collection will be a valuable upgrade. In addition to multititle searching, users will be able to filter search requests, such as only chapter titles, etc. Forthcoming titles are clearly marked and email alerts will notify users of new titles.

Content Founded in 1998 and now a division of OCLC, netLibrary offers an expansive aggregation of approximately 40,000 reference, scholarly, and professional titles (plus another 4000 public domain titles in literature and history) from some 300 different publishers. Covering all disciplines and with materials appropriate for every level of readership, netLibrary collections can be tweaked to meet the needs of virtually any library.

netLibrary accepts its e-book content from publishers in either electronic or print form and converts it into a standard format, giving the publisher final approval over what appears online. The netLibrary model is designed to encourage publishers to expand into the e-book arena without risking a loss in revenue; netLibrary titles in a library's collection are accessible to only one user at a time. netLibrary also serves as a copyright watchdog, issuing copyright notices and suspending access to the service when it detects instances of excessive copying and printing.

Libraries and users accustomed to unimpeded access to their electronic holdings are likely to find this first come, first served restriction to be an irritating holdover from the print era. Likewise, the safeguards on printing could seem to be an overzealous incursion on the principle of fair use. Realistically, netLibrary's determination to protect the interests of the publishers is undoubtedly why so many publishers have agreed to release so much quality content.

Searchability Full MARC records—offering direct access to an e-book's contents via the library's OPAC—are available for each netLibrary title, so access is the same as for every other book in a library's catalog. By default, the e-book opens with the title and table of contents in the left-hand frame, along with a series of tabs—Search, Bookmarks, Notes, TOC, e-book Info, and Dictionary—and a link to online Help. The wider frame to the right contains the title page and the contents of the text as the reader proceeds to navigate page-by-page through the book. netLibrary will introduce a new interface in early 2004, which we previewed, that will improve searching across a library's entire netLibrary holdings. It opens in Basic Search mode with several clickable options: Keyword (i.e., terms from the title, author, LC subject heading, publisher, and ISBN fields), Title, Author, and Full Text.

Advanced Search converts these access points into pull-down menu options. Pull-down Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) allow the user to combine terms for sophisticated searching. The clean, elegant interface makes limiting— by year or date range, publisher, and language—particularly easy, and sorting options include Newest First, Oldest First, Top Matches, Title, and Author.

Not available for preview, but forthcoming, is the new netLibrary IT Center, a tool for searching across all entries within the information technology content area. IT Center joins the recently introduced Reference Center, which facilitates searching across the contents of a library's reference e-books.

Price One-time purchase prices for netLibrary e-book titles are based on publishers' list prices. Although there is an additional service fee for continued access, the books are owned outright by the library or consortia that acquires them. Online selection tools help collection developers determine what is available from netLibrary's roster of publishers, and profiles for standing orders may be established to streamline collection building.

Who Needs It? While most e-book products deal with a clearly defined subject area and an easily recognizable target audience, netLibrary's broad customer base and extensive title list confirm that the company is happy to play the roles of generalist and aggregator in the emerging e-book industry. While its "publishers first" stance forces both libraries and users to make adjustments, the bright side is an "e-books for everybody" product—basic but effective—that could meet the needs for electronic access in pretty much any type of library.

Content Perhaps being the latest to climb aboard the e-book wagon gives Oxford University Press (OUP) an advantage, and we were impressed with our initial viewing of Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) which launched in November 2003. OSO includes more than 700 OUP titles within philosophy, religion, political science, and economics and finance. Each module or subject area has a separate homepage. According to the publisher, up to 200 books from OUP's frontlist will be added annually.

OSO is available on a multiuser, sitewide model, with access enabled for remote users (referred URL or VPN). Institutions can subscribe to individual modules or to the entire collection. Concurrent user and unlimited access licenses are available. The full text is completely searchable within each title and across all titles and subjects.

Key features include abstracts and hyperlinked keywords at both the book and chapter level (typically written by the author); links from the text to other online journals and reference sources; reference linking from bibliographies and footnotes to available online content; and digital object identifiers (DOIs) at book and chapter level to facilitate faculty use in online syllabi and other course material. The links from footnotes and bibliographies bring users to cited works if the user's institution has a subscription to these resources. OSO is planning to survey monthly online resources to find full-text versions and add links. If a user does not have access rights, the online publisher's site will offer information on how to get full text. Initially, the outside linking is restricted to journal citations, but there are plans to add links to e-books as well.

Subscriber services include MARC records and monthly usage reports, including number of sessions, number of entries viewed, number of searches, and number of turnaways—an important tool for those with a concurrent usage model. Oxford is creating partnerships with abstracting and indexing services to provide abstracts and keywords through services such as Ingenta, ProQuest, Swets, and others.

Searchability There are numerous ways researchers can access the content of OSO, starting with individual links from the library's web catalog. Each book has a main page displaying title and bibliographic information, an abstract and keywords at book level, and a table of contents with chapters linked to full text and abstracts. Displaying in a "Contents Scroller" in the left-side navigation is the table of contents, with clickable links to each chapter. From anywhere within a single book users can navigate back to this main page by the "Table of contents" link at the end of what is referred to as the "Breadcrumb Trail." Located at the top navigation bar, this trail incorporates links that display the specific subject index, subject, table of contents, book title, author, and, if you are within a book, the pagination—in other words, it's what keeps you from getting lost.

Entering directly from the welcoming OSO site, users can browse the Title, Subject, and Author index from the top navigation bar. This along with links to context-sensitive help and "What's New" repeat on each screen. Deciding to browse by subject, we selected Philosophy and were presented with a subdiscipline index containing 11 headings. Selecting Logic/Philosophy of Mathematics, the interface displays an A–Z list (only those letters that are represented in a particular subdiscipline are linked). This topic retrieved 11 books overall. Clicking on the titles returns users to the book's main page.

Users have two options for searching: Quick Search, also available for nonsubscribers, and Advanced Search. Search options for the advanced mode include title and chapter title, author, keyword, abstract, full text, publication date or range, and subject.

A Quick Search of women or gender across all subjects resulted in 26 books and 220 chapters. The system sort is relevance, but users have the choice of title, author, or publication date. Search results are viewed as an entire book, selected chapter, or particular page. Refining our search for more precise results, we tried the Advanced Search, limited women or gender to an abstract search, to Religion and Philosophy modules, and publication date of 2002 and later. This revised search retrieved 11 books and 52 chapters. Navigation is well designed and users can quickly refine a search; navigate through one book or numerous books; take advantage of abstract keywords, which will retrieve other abstracts (book and chapter) that share the keyword; or begin from scratch with little effort.

The interface includes a "Cross Reference" feature that worked well. This tracks an author or cited person to see what else they have written in the collection and is a resourceful way to search a unique topic or term to see where else it appears.

Currently users can only print at one time a nonformatted screen view (which represents five printed pages), and there is no email feature. We would like to see a "Search Results" tab or link, rather than relying on the browser's back button.

Price OSO is available with unlimited access or concurrent user pricing. Rates range from $1425 for one to five users/ module (with discounts for multiple modules) to $9100 for unlimited access to the full collection. Free trials are available.

Who Needs It? Oxford Scholarship Online already has the makings of a must-have online resource. Providing access to Oxford University Press's many scholarly books in a well-designed and easy-to-navigate environment will have an impact on the electronic reference market, and incorporating a flexible pricing scheme and module selection model should entice many institutions to subscribe. The quality features, sophisticated search functionality, and additional online content that OUP is providing are numerous, and the content speaks for itself. It's a combination that works well.

Content This unique product is not a collection of e-books. Instead, it is an aggregated access point for subject encyclopedias, reference works, and monographs, many of which are in electronic form. The database, which adds new titles weekly, contains over three million citations from 2500+ titles representing 260 reference publishers, all combined in one easy-to-search interface. The service acts as a "pointer" to information, and users retrieve brief citations that display the source title, date of publication and publisher, and number of hits. Links are provided to e-version editions (if a library subscribes), the library's catalog for titles held by the library, article titles, index terms, and full bibliographic records, which contain additional access links and ARBA (American Reference Book Annual) Online reviews.

Reference Universe is updated with new data and titles approximately every two weeks, and the company's goal is to include every title reviewed by ARBA and other review sources from 1990 to the present. The number of citations that include links to full-text editions increases each week as more reference publishers make e-versions available in addition to their existing print format.

Searchability From the opening screen subscribers can search article titles and back-of-the-book indexes down to volume and page number by keyword, exact phrase, or exact words. Searches can be limited by publication date as well as number of hits—the default is 1000—and users can also take advantage of the Browse Mode to search the Title and Keyword index by title of work, publisher, subject, or Library of Congress call number.

Once a search is executed, the system displays a list of reference titles in the order of greatest number of hits. Users can re-sort by date of publication and by title. In addition to the title, each brief entry includes publisher information and number of index entries or article titles containing the search term, as well as a series of icons that represent a local holdings match, article titles, index terms, e-versions, and bibliographic record. Selecting the full record allows users to link to related reference material via subject headings, see other material by the author(s), and view online reviews.

Paratext recently installed the new Reference Universe local holdings match system, which automatically shows a library's holdings matched against a search for Reference Universe. Employing a prominent check mark in the results list, users can immediately see what they have access to, along with the other matches from their query. Full bibliographic data is provided for all titles, and subscribers can view the complete MARC format as well.

Price Pricing is by Carnegie classification, ranging from $2995 annually for research libraries down to $995 for smaller schools. Pricing for public libraries is based on population served, ranging from $2995 to $995 per year. A library's subscription, via IP authentication, includes unlimited campuswide access.

Who Needs It? Reference Universe is invaluable as a way to promote holdings information easily to patrons as well as an in-house collection development tool for reference and acquisitions librarians who want an effective method to evaluate content and format. Librarians can examine the table of contents and the full index of a particular encyclopedia without having the source in hand, learn if there is an online version available, and read a current review for that title. All of the e-versions we viewed were ABC-CLIO books, but we assume as Gale and OUP e-books become more established, their links will be included.

Content Born out of a joint venture involving perhaps the two premiere publishers in the information technology field—O'Reilly & Associates and the Pearson Technology Group—Safari Tech Books Online represents a near-perfect match of audience, content, and delivery system. Online since 2001, Safari's content is organized into nearly two dozen subject categories, specifically applied sciences, artificial intelligence, business, certification, computer science, databases, desktop applications, desktop publishing, e-commerce, enterprise computing, graphics, hardware, human-computer interaction, Internet/online, IT management, markup languages, multimedia, networking, operating systems, programming, security, and software engineering.

The title list runs 23 pages and includes some 1300 electronic books from O'Reilly and the many familiar Pearson imprints (including Peachpit Press, Prentice Hall PTR, Que, and Sams). Microsoft Press books were added in mid-2002. In many cases, titles become available online in Safari before they reach print publication.

Searchability From the main Safari page, a quick search template enables the searcher to find keywords in all books or in just a personal bookshelf. Additionally, the user may check the "Code Fragments only" box to limit results specifically to examples of programming code reproduced within a text. Multiple search terms are scanned for proximity to one another, and using quotation marks around a phrase further enhances precision. Safari also supports case-sensitivity when the term is surrounded by quotation marks, which is particularly useful in the alphabet soup of IT.

The "Browse by Category" option provides broad subject area access to Safari's content, and each of the categories is expandable for more focused browsing. The + sign to the left of Multimedia, for example, opens up a list of Level-1 Subcategories that includes seven specific applications (After Effects, Director, Final Cut Pro, iDVD, Premiere, and QuickTime), one software producer (Macromedia), and four general subtopics (Animation, Audio, Music, and Video). Audio, in turn, breaks down into two Level-2 Subcategories—Internet and Streaming.

Advanced search mode gives the searcher a single box for entering keywords, with Boolean-type operations accomplished by selecting the radio button for "With all of these words" (AND), "With at least one of these words" (OR), or "With exactly these words" (string searching). As in basic mode, the searcher may specify that a keyword appear only in sections of code.

Field searches include title keyword, author, and ISBN. Pull-down menus allow a search to be restricted to one of the subject categories or to a specific publisher. Advanced search mode also supports date range searching.

Results are ranked by relevancy, and users have two options for display. View by Section identifies the specific chapter or section of a book that is most relevant to your search criteria and displays a brief excerpt linked to the complete text of the section. Because multiple chapters from the same book may be relevant to the user's search, a book title may appear numerous times in the results list. View by Book identifies every book that has material relating to the search terms and then ranks each relevant chapter within that title individually by relevance, creating a somewhat more streamlined list. Results may also be sorted by title and date.

Additional amenities include the ability to revisit recent searches and recent pages, to bookmark selections, and to take notes. Note that this is the Safari interface and not the more familiar (to library users anyway) ProQuest look.

Price Pricing is based on the size of the custom bookshelf—i.e., the number of "slots"—purchased. For the most part, one e-book title equals one slot, but there are half-slot titles, as well as two- and three-slot titles. ProQuest has exclusive rights to distribute Safari Tech Books Online to academic, public, and school libraries and nonexclusive rights for government libraries; it offers a 30-day trial. Personal subscriptions begin at the five-slot "Starter" bookshelf level, priced at $9.99/month or $109.99/year. A 30-slot "Large" bookshelf costs $24.99/month or $269.99/year. Interested individuals can try Safari for free for 14 days.

There is also an Enterprise Edition targeted at companies and a Reseller Edition that allows companies to make Safari Tech Books Online available to their clients.

Who Needs It? Meeting the demand for current, accurate technical information has always been problematic because the shelf life of these titles can be extremely short by conventional library standards. What Safari does, in the way that it licenses the product and through the usage data it provides, is to give library collection builders an effective way to hit a target that never stops moving. Unlike most e-book collections, Safari encourages subscribers to become active managers of the titles that comprise their custom holdings, adding new titles and swapping out old ones as products and technologies evolve (or disappear) and the needs of their clients change.

It's a little hard to imagine a library that couldn't use a subscription to Safari. Whether you are providing support for your own systems staff, computer science students and faculty, IT professionals, or just the average computer user, this product that can be configured to meet all or any of these needs.

Content Providing highly authoritative information on scientific, medical, technical, and other professional specialties, Wiley InterScience is much, much bigger than its Online-books component. An integrated platform that allows searching across all product types, the Wiley resource not only offers access to 562 e-books as of late November 2003 but 467 journals, 33 reference works, four databases, and 13 current protocols.

Eleven specialized collections in four broad subject areas make up the Wiley InterScience Online-books offerings. Chemistry includes the Analytical Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, and Spectroscopy Collection; Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry Collection; Patai Series—The Chemistry of Functional Groups; and Polymers, Materials Science, and Industrial Chemistry Collection. The Communications Technology Collection, Electronic and Electrical Engineering Collection, and Wireless Communications Collection comprise the Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications resources. The Life and Medical Sciences category breaks down into the Medical Sciences Collection, Molecular Biology Collection, and Pharmaceutical Medicine Collection. Finally, there is the Mathematics and Statistics Collection, introduced in 2003. Wiley provides MARC records for all titles in each collection.

Searchability From the homepage, searchers may immediately launch a Quick Search across all the Wiley InterScience content or choose to limit retrieval to keywords appearing in publication titles. Browse by Subject and Browse by Product type (where one may access the Online-books component of the service directly) are additional homepage options. There is also a link to the Advanced Search mode.

Clicking on the Product Type Online Books takes the searcher to a page where he or she may Browse by Title, Browse by Subject, select one of the Top Books to examine, conduct a Quick Search across all Online Book content or within publication titles, or opt to conduct an Advanced Search.

Advanced Search mode gives the user three search boxes to work with, each of which has a pull-down menu of field limiters as well as pull-down Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT) for constructing sophisticated searches. Boolean operators may be entered within the search boxes as well. In fact, Advanced Search offers the full complement of search syntax capabilities, including proximity, truncation and wildcards, phrase searching using quotation marks, and nesting using parentheses.

Check boxes allow searching by Product Type and by Subject (including all of them or any combination of products or subject areas), searching within previously saved content or within specific Online-book collections, and limiting by date. Searches may be modified or saved, and results may be sorted by relevance, date, or publication title. Full-text content is displayed in PDF format and may be printed, emailed, or saved to the user's profile.

Individual users with institutional subscriptions may register, which gives them customization features plus access to content alerts.

Price Wiley helpfully provides an online pricing worksheet that allows potential subscribers to calculate the cost of each Online-books collection based on institution type and number of FTEs. Multiple subscriptions are discounted at 20 percent, and free trials are available to institutions and registered individuals. For materials outside your institutional subscription, Wiley offers a pay per view option that enables researchers to purchase access to journal articles and book chapters using a credit card.

Who Needs It? This should appeal strongly to a broad cross-section of science and technology researchers as well as upper-level students. Breaking Wiley Interscience Online-books up into a variety of subject-specific collections enables subscribers to focus on just those components that meet their researchers' needs. Wiley's FTE and institution-type pricing make their content more accessible to smaller institutions than the one-price-fits-all model. Because Wiley InterScience is open for searching and specific content is available on a pay per view basis, few researchers will be denied access to the information they absolutely must have.