Bundles of Books

Our users have an insatiable appetite for full-text online resources, but the demand has been for the journal literature—up to now.

Interest in electronic reference titles, on the other hand, comes from librarians and faculty members. After all, it takes sophistication and experience to appreciate a reference book. Nonetheless, it is an easy leap to realize that reference works are ideally suited to electronic delivery. Users are increasingly not in the library building, reference books often deliver information in compact portions perfect for online reading, and electronic access often increases the usability of a reference source.

One obstacle may be lack of vision regarding the e-book format. The titles reviewed here forcibly demonstrate that e-books are, in part, evolving into an integrated matrix of technologies. These e-books provide not only more than a print book ever could, but in some cases—Knovel is the prime example—provide more than the user may have ever guessed was possible. Imagine a book that is partly a movie, partly a collection of primary source documents, partly a directory of hyperlinks to external web resources, partly a reference companion to itself, and partly a set of tools that anticipates a researcher's needs.

This is an area where products are emerging and expanding rapidly. Look for reviews of Safari Tech Books Online, Wiley Interscience's Online-books, netLibrary, ABC-CLIO's History Reference, and Gutenberg-e from Columbia, as well as the forthcoming Gale Virtual Reference and Oxford Scholarship Online in Part 2 of our e-book coverage in the Winter 2003 netConnect.

The books are organized in general categories and include American History from Colonial Through the 20th Century, European History from Ancient Through the Present, Eastern European History, Middle East History from Ancient Through the Present, and History of Technology. Two new categories were added this fall: Comparative/World History and Latin American History. A sampling of current e-books includes Leonard Krieger's The German Idea of Freedom: History of a Political Tradition and Robert Tucker's Stalin as Revolutionary 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality. Forthcoming titles include Studs Terkel's Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression and Mark Naison's Communists in Harlem During the Depression.

Eight societies of the ACLS form the working group for the HEB Project including the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians. Participating publishers include Harvard University Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, and Oxford University Press. Check the web site for a complete listing of participants.

Searchability: The collection contains two types of e-books: page images, which have exact page replications of the print book and are searchable by multiple OCR-scanned text, and encoded text titles, which use XML-coded text and structures. There are distinctions between the two regarding display and functionality.

The encoded titles are enhanced with hypertext links and search features for navigation among text, bibliographies, citations, endnotes, and appendixes. An array of special features includes pop-up windows to view larger images; an image viewer to zoom and pan; hyperlinks to notes sections; illustration lists that include a detail of all figures and hyperlinks to where each appears; external links to web sites and scholarly resources; and related titles lists. One impressive feature is a pull-down list of reviews available through several online resources, including JSTOR and ProjectMUSE. Forthcoming features include color images in JPEG format, high-resolution images, and sound and video files.

Upon entering the site, users can select either to search, browse, read the help topics, or find more information about the project. A keyword search can be performed by entering a single word or phrase within full text, author, title, or subject categories. Additional options include Boolean, proximity, and bibliographic search modes. Boolean and proximity modes allow further limiting options.

Search results are displayed in a list that can be sorted via a pull-down menu by author, title, date ascending, and date descending. Individual records in the results list contain the basic citation, page image/encoding icon, hyperlinks to the results details, and an interactive table of contents.

Selecting the table of contents link displays the Title Record, which contains a variety of elements, and permits users to start reading the book page by page or by a particular chapter. For page image books a pull-down menu provides access to any individual page. Successive pages may also be 'turned' by selecting the arrow buttons in the toolbar. A view pull-down menu adjusts the text size of the scanned image.

Usage statistics by title are tracked and reported, and MARC records are available via FTP. Patrons can locate the titles directly from persistent URL inks in the MARC records via their library's catalog, or through the HEB Project web site.

Price: Pricing ranges from $300 to $1300; details available on the ACLS web site. Free trials are available to librarians and faculty.

Who Needs It? Using technology familiar to similar digital projects such as JSTOR, the HEB Project will appeal to small and large institutions alike. Titles were selected based on continued importance to scholars, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates, and by publishing 'born digital' titles, the project will fast become a necessity in humanities research. The interface, although easily navigated, allows for in-depth querying as well.

The database is made available via the recognizable EBSCO host interface, and a subscription to BookSource also gains access to over 100,000 images as part of the Image collection, which can be searched independently. Institutions with subscriptions to other EBSCO periodical databases can search the content of multiple databases simultaneously for a results list containing a variety of full-text sources.

One notable feature is the inclusion within the citations of nationally developed curriculum benchmarks, with hyperlinks to all content in the database sharing the same benchmark. The 170 benchmarks cover the content areas of language arts, civics, earth and space sciences, physical sciences, U.S. history, and world history. New books and updates are added on a frequent basis.

Searchability: The general overall look and feel of BookSource is identical to any of the 100-plus EBSCO databases available via its platform, although there are specific field limiters and indexed fields that are unique to this resource. Users can perform Keyword (Basic Search), Advanced, or Image Collection searches, as well as construct queries using the Subjects or Book index authority files, via a series of buttons at the top of the screen. Users can perform almost as many limit options from the Basic Search as the Advanced, which is a timesaving feature in our opinion and one that is well suited for the younger or less experienced research crowd. Students are able to limit their searches by book title, year published, Lexile reading level, number of pages, or articles with images.

Where BookSource differs from other e-book models is that the content of each book is organized into smaller chapters or 'articles' established by the publisher. Each article appears as an individual record in the results list, complete with its own citation and abstract. Citations include a 'table of contents' link that displays a list, following the order of the table of contents, of all the records (or chapters of the book) for that specific publication. Once we got used to 'reading' a book in this manner, we found the navigation to be quite accommodating. Additionally, users can take full advantage of author, subject, and benchmark hyperlinks in each record to retrieve similar material or broaden one's search.

All the other features—including using Folders to manage records and output options such as Save Manager, Print Manager, and E-mail Manager—will be familiar to existing EBSCO host users.

Price: Contact EBSCO for pricing information. Free trials are available.

Who Needs It? BookSource is an exciting product aimed at schools and public libraries, and the ease of navigation and range of content will appeal to that clientele. Subject material is adequate, and libraries with smaller budgets will want to take advantage of access to the large number of quality resources. Add to that the EBSCO host interface and the Image Collection bonus, and you have a promising product.

The product suites include more than 4300 full-text e-books on topics such as accounting, certification, consolidation and mergers, desktop and office applications, e-commerce, financial planning, management, networking and protocols, programming, taxation and valuation, and web development. The resource is rapidly growing, with more than 1600 e-books added this year. Annual subscriptions are available for corporate, library, and individual use and are based on the collections selected and the number of users per collection.

Although content is the same, there are slight differences for corporate or library audiences, primarily around customizable options, language, and layout. More than 110 publishers are involved, including Microsoft, Osborne/McGraw-Hill, Harvard Business School, John Wiley, and MIT.

Of the four suites, ITPro (2860 titles) was launched first and covers all aspects of current technology, with a focus toward developers, network administrators, technology executives, and tech support representatives. Subscribers to this suite also get the bonus OfficeEssentials, a 90-plus-title specialty collection targeted at nontechnical users who require a little extra assistance with common desktop applications. BusinessPro (1340 titles) is geared toward corporate management, and FinancePro (166 titles), recently added to the product line, is aimed at corporate financial professionals. MARC records are available, and numerous personalized options exist to encourage faculty use for coursepacks, syllabi, note sharing, and bookmarks.

Searchability: Users have several options when beginning a search in the Books24x7 collection. Libraries can incorporate MARC records with links to the full text, or users can search via Book24x7's Referenceware platform. In either case, each title in the subscribed collection is available in full text, organized into smaller, more readily searchable sections. The table of contents, individual chapters, and other subsections are available for browsing as well, and users can drill down from a list of topics to find the desired book, chapter, diagram, code, etc.

A top navigation bar includes the Find Books link, allowing searching by keyword or phrase and combining search concepts with Boolean logic and/or truncation. Users can also use the Lookup box to enter title, author, publisher, or ISBN. The layout is clean, with the content displayed in the center of the page. Additionally, the chapter's section headings and navigational aids display on the left-side frame, making it a snap to select chapters, the table of contents, or the original book list.

We did a simple search in ITPro for video and firewire and retrieved 148 books. Each book includes links to the top three hits that are relevant to the query, as well as a link to Relevant Chapters in the Table of Contents. Cross references are hyperlinked, as are external web sites.

By becoming Library Community Members, subscribers can use the My Bookshelf functionality to customize the library for their specific needs and uses; books can be added or removed at any time. As part of this unique personalization feature, users can receive email alerts when new books are added to the collection, create bookmarks, change display options, and more.

Price: Companies, institutions, and individuals can license each suite as a standalone or add-on product. Consortia agreements negotiated for shared access. Free trials are available.

Who Needs It? Books24x7 allows patrons to access a large volume of current reference material in a searchable format. The customized options help bring this product into the classroom, a plus for faculty. Users can easily maintain a library of texts pertinent to their specific interests, and the 'frontlist' content and focus provide currency in subject areas that demand them. Academic libraries with strong programs in business and management will quickly see the value of a subscription.

There are two other aggregated collections. Spanish Language has 750 titles on fiction and academic subjects. General Interest, with 2000 titles on such subjects as travel, careers, and personal finance, should appeal to public libraries. The company rounds out its database offerings with collections of sheet music (Byron Hoyt), technical information on manufacturing engineering (Society of Manufacturing Engineers), and rare books and manuscripts (Octavo).

The company also offers ebrary Discover, a consumer version of its product. The 20,000 full-text items in Discover are freely available for searching online. Personal users who want to view actual contents of the documents are required to set up an account using a credit card. The minimum deposit is $5. With an account, publishers' fees for printing are debited, and additional features, including highlighting text, are available.

New books are added continually, particularly for business and technology titles. Simultaneous multiuser access—even to the same title—is one of ebrary's distinguishing capabilities.

Searchability: Accessing any ebrary database for the first time begins with downloading and installing the ebrary Reader, a PDF viewer with custom features that support ebrary's unique traits.

Simple search mode will find keyword terms or phrases (when entered within quotation marks) in titles, in subject areas, or in the full text of a book. By default the search examines all document types in any language or subject category, but pull-down menus allow for more precise recall. Simple search supports author and publisher's name searches as well.

If the searcher opts to move on to Advanced search mode, all elements of the previous Simple search are imported. As searchers, we're always disappointed when a system doesn't anticipate this, so we are particularly happy to see it here, especially since one click of the prominently situated Reset button clears the previous search.

Advanced search mode supplies two boxes in its search template. Again, pull-down menus let the searcher specify a search in the text, subject, title, author, or publisher fields and apply document type, language, and subject category limits. Multiple search criteria are ANDed. The searcher may expand the search template by clicking on the More button. Missing from the package are capabilities most researchers expect, including truncation, proximity, and Boolean operators.

Successful searchers produce an elegant results display with the book jacket (or a document type icon) and a basic bibliographic description that includes hyperlinks to authors and editors, publishers, and assigned LC subject headings. Results are relevancy ranked, which is critical given that we are searching the full text of a book-length document.

The contents display consists of the bibliographic description, table of contents/reader's notes/highlights, and the text itself in an adjustable frame. The custom ebrary Reader toolbar allows the searcher/reader to copy selected text, print a page or range of pages—optimized for speed or quality—from the chapter, bookmark sections, highlight specific text, and navigate from page to page and from one occurrence of a search term to the next.

The coolest component in the Reader toolbar is InfoTools. This feature will define a term with the Merriam-Webster online dictionary; explain selected terms via Encyclopedia Britannica; locate a geographic site using MapQuest, National Geographic, or Yahoo Cities; translate terms to or from French, German, Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese; and find phone information, postal and email addresses, biographies, and bibliographies. Also built into InfoTools is the ability to search the current document or all documents in the collection for selected text and the ability to launch a web search.

Browse is the final search mode, but for a resource like this one, where it is hard to anticipate what specific authors and titles may be represented, Browse is particularly valuable. Browse displays title counts for broad subject groupings and allows the searcher to break down each category into more specific subfields.

Price: ebrary defies convention with clear and public pricing information. Annual subscription fees are determined by collection purchased, FTE, and library type. For AC, public libraries pay 25¢ per FTE cardholder; school, community college, and vocational schools pay $1 per FTE student; academic libraries, $1.50 per FTE student; and special libraries are charged $2 per employee. FTE charges are lower if the library only subscribes to one of the aggregated collections rather than to the comprehensive AC, and there is some variation in FTE charges among discipline-specific resources. There is a $2000 minimum, however, and discounted pricing for consortia.

Who Needs It? It's not just the content, which is extensive and up-to-date, that makes Academic Complete a compelling acquisition, but the suite of researcher-friendly InfoTools adds significantly to its value. It will appeal to the physically or geographically isolated researcher, or distance learner, who needs—but cannot readily access—an academic research collection. It should also appeal to many libraries as a means of complementing their conventional book collections, although a solid technology infrastructure is a must.

It is a little troubling that some of ebrary's contracted publishers have not fully embraced the e-book concept; some titles in the database are not viewable, copyable, or printable in their entirety. ebrary compensates by providing direct hyperlinks to Amazon and Barnes & Noble to facilitate online book ordering, but this will be of little help to the researcher who expects the content immediately.

Name a sci-tech reference handbook and it is almost certainly included in Knovel, which aggregates over 500 titles from an impressive roster of federal government and commercial publishers—ASME, Elsevier, Institute of Physics, John Wiley, McGraw-Hill, and Kluwer, to name a few.

Knovel's 15 subject areas are Adhesives, Coatings, Sealants & Inks; Food Science; Aerospace & Radar Technology; General Engineering References; Biochemistry, Biology & Biotechnology; Mechanics & Mechanical Engineering; Ceramics & Ceramic Engineering; Metals & Metallurgy; Chemistry & Chemical Engineering; Pharmaceuticals, Cosmetics & Toiletries; Construction Materials & Engineering; Plastics & Rubbers; Electrical & Power Engineering; Safety, Health & Hygiene; and Environment & Environmental Engineering.

Knovel's growth rate is approximately 20 titles per month, which means current subscribers can reasonably expect to see the size of the database double in a couple of years. Knovel is also exploring the possibility of adding an archive of earlier editions for those researchers who need retrospective access.

Searchability: Searchers can go to work immediately using the Site Keyword Search on the Knovel main page. The Site Keyword template offers two search boxes connected by a Boolean operator. The search may be run against the entire database or in a single subject area using a pull-down limiter. Searches may also be restricted to a single title from the results list or the titles in the personalized My Knovel.

If two keywords are entered into a single search box, Knovel assumes proximity within five words. If no hits result, it looks for the words together on the same page. There is no phrase searching using quotation marks, no Boolean within a single search box, and no truncation. The search engine does, however, find matches for both singular and plural forms of a keyword (which may include substance names, formulas, property names, and subject terms as well as words appearing anywhere in an e-book's text).

There are two basic classes of content. 'Searchable' books represent the contents of their print counterparts in PDF format (or occasionally in HTML format).

The second type of content is Interactive Deep Searchable (IDS), where the data from PDF text is also represented in Knovel-generated interactive spreadsheets. Researchers may find, select, filter, export, print, sort, and rearrange the data in these tables in any way. The format of IDS books is standardized from title to title—Knovel's aim being to make the source of the data transparent to the user while bringing the actual information to the forefront.

IDS books are most effectively searched using Knovel's Site Data Search mode. Site Data searchers are offered a search template with up to three sets of criteria for the searcher to define. These criteria include Category (including some 30 specific properties such as applications, bearing properties, hazard-related properties, material composition, physical constants, toughness), Field Name, Operator (is equal to, greater than, between, etc.), and Keyword(s), and various options change appropriately depending upon which subject area is being searched.

Knovel's IDS sources frequently contain extremely valuable extras such as interactive graphs and equations that enable a researcher to input data, make calculations, and plot graphs on the fly. For the sophisticated researcher, and for the reference librarian who finds manually extracting esoteric data from print handbooks maddening, this represents a quantum leap forward.

Price: Pricing is based on the subject area 'bundles' selected and on the number of simultaneous users. Books added to any of your bundles while a subscription year is in progress are included at no cost. Some titles are designated premium content, and interested subscribers will incur additional costs to access their contents.

Potential individual subscribers may arrange a free seven-day trial in up to three subject areas. Libraries and other institutional subscribers may preview the entire Knovel collection. Knovel also offers a 30-day, money-back guarantee for any titles ordered.

Who Needs It? Knovel's potential audience among applied science, engineering, and technology users is vast and diverse.

By reworking content to make it consistent throughout the database regardless of the original source, by anticipating how a researcher ultimately intends to use this information, and by then providing all the tools that facilitate the process, Knovel is redefining the reference e-book on its own terms. For the typical resource, if the interface is obvious and easy to use, we call it 'intuitive.' Knovel reminds us that real intuition involves effortless understanding coupled with a graceful response. Knovel is in a class by itself.

Subject areas cover the full spectrum of academic disciplines: Art and Architecture, Biological Sciences, Classics, Computing, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Economics and Business, Food and Nutrition, History, Law, Literature (including African American, American, Classical, English, and Irish, along with specialized sources for Shakespeare, 20th-century poets, and literary terminology), Medicine, Military History, Modern Languages, Mythology and Folklore, Performing Arts, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Politics and Social Sciences, Religion and Philosophy, and Science. There is a General Reference area, which includes the World Encyclopedia, and a Quotations section. English Dictionaries and Thesauruses as well as English Language Reference (sources on abbreviations, idioms, grammar, usage, etc.) are broken out in separate sections as well.

Entries tend to be brief and unique from each other. The one for 'Epiphany' in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church runs 110 words, while the corresponding entry for 'epiphany' in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms is 112 words. Even the most expansive entries were all muscle—the article on Oscar Wilde in The Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature was 652 words, while The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy entry for 'Aristotle' ran 785 words. ORO's textual contents are enhanced with over 1000 related web links.

Searchability: ORO opens with Quick Search mode prominently featured on the Welcome display. Advanced Search and 'Search within a subject'—with its 20 broad subject areas—appear below the Quick Search box. There are also links to news on forthcoming titles and updates, to a one-page display of all the reference titles associated with each subject area, and to the Browse list of entry headings for the whole database. The links to external web resources are only slightly less prominent but still readily accessible from the Welcome page. It's a design that puts every feature of ORO at the immediate disposal of anyone using it.

Quick Search looks for a term in the entry headings across the whole database, and in the absence of any matches, it expands into a full-text search of all entries. Multiple keywords are 'Ored,' so 'global warming' without quotation marks yields 139 hits, while 'global warming' within quotation marks produces a more precise results list of 16 entries. Relevancy ranking puts the most likely entries at the top of each list.

The results display gives the entry title, relevance ranking (as a percent), the first lines of the entry, and the book title and subject area where the book resides.

Selecting 'Physical Sciences and Mathematics' from the 'Search within a subject' option shows the user just six titles, but they are ones that are highly likely to be relevant. From here the user may either enter a keyword that is searched in all six titles, or select a single title and execute the search there.

Advanced Search mode, when selected from the main search page, resembles 'Search within a subject' in that it offers the user the opportunity to restrict a search to the various subject areas. The default is to search all 20, but they may be individually checked in any combination. Boolean is supported, along with two other Advanced Search options: Standard search, which will find plurals and derivatives, and Pattern search, which will find near misses when a word is not correctly spelled. Only one of these options may be selected at a time. Advanced Searches may be conducted on free-text terms, entry headings, personal names, or dates. Interestingly, selecting Advanced Search from within the context of a 'Search within a subject' brings up all the advanced capabilities but limits retrieval to just those reference books assigned to that subject area.

The texts of the entries themselves are peppered with words and names that are hyperlinked to other entries within the reference title that the searcher is viewing, and there is a note on how to cite each entry. Articles may be emailed, and ORO may be added to your browser for even more effective access.

Price: OUP makes unlimited and concurrent user licenses available, with annual subscription rates starting a $250. Discounts are available to secondary schools, and institutions and organizations may arrange for a free 30-day trial.

Who Needs It? Oxford Reference Online presents libraries with an effective way to provide access to an impressive array of valuable resources in a consistent and integrated way. As the embodiment of the high-quality, authoritative ready-reference book in electronic format, ORO is suited to virtually any library setting.

xreferplus contains more than 1.3 million individual entries from a wide range of encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, and books of quotations, as well as a range of subject-specific titles covering everything from art and architecture, business, geography, health, history, law, literature, music, and politics to religion and science and technology. The xreferplus resource increases the value of the original content by using a network of cross references between the books and their entries. A selected sampling of titles organized within 20 topics includes The Bridgeman Art Library Archive, The Columbia Encyclopedia, The Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography, Dictionary of Economics (Wiley), The Encyclopedia of Ecology and Environmental Management (Blackwell Science), and Who's Who in the Old Testament (Routledge). Material primarily comes from British publishers, although there is some American content and the company plans to add more. An example of new content includes The Bridgeman Art Library Archive, which features 17,000-plus individual works of art, cross-referenced and linked using Bridgeman's own categories.

New options exist for institutions and consortia. Originally available as a fixed-list subscription, xreferplus can be upgraded to a customizable 'Pick and Mix' scheme. Subscribers to xreferplus 100 or xreferplus 125 can select the 100 or 125 titles within their subscription from the entire list of books. Usage reports are available so institutions can monitor title use and change their library composition accordingly. Institutions can also subscribe to xreferplus Unlimited to access the entire collection plus any titles added to the service during the subscription period. MARC records are available at no additional cost.

Searchability: Users can begin their research quite simply by entering a term or phrase in the search box at the top of the opening screen, which searches across the entire 'library.' If the intended search falls within an xrefer category, users can choose from the directory-style listing of topics accessible from this screen as well. A new page will display with a list of titles within that grouping. A search can be performed based on this smaller collection or limited to an individual book. Each title can also be browsed, similar to its print counterpart. Simply select the book, and 'flip' through the pages using the letter bar. When choosing the Advanced search option (which strongly resembles an Advanced Google search), users can search all the words, the exact phrase, any of the words, 'spelt or sounds like,' or without words, and limit to a particular topic(s).

Results (up to 200) are ranked by relevancy as the default, and searchers have the option to see results with images first as the display sort. Each entry provides both linked cross references within the same work, if any exist, as well as 'xreferences' to other works that are listed on the left side of the screen.

Several additional features are available from each entry page. The 'xreference mapper' allows for a visual representation of how the data are related. Students can take advantage of the 'Citing this entry,' which appears beneath the text. A search box and topic bar at the top of each page affords users the ability not only to refine but perform a new search. A minor point, but we would like to see the search term automatically display when switching from Simple to Advanced mode.

Price: Pricing is negotiated by site. Free 30-day trial available for institutions.

Who Needs It? The company seems committed to this product, not only by adding content but by greatly improving interface and search functionality within the past year. The xreferences add value, and the integration with online databases (such as Bridgeman) provides a more contextual view for research purposes. Public and academic library users will appreciate the direction the company is taking.