InfoTech: 3M To Launch Library Ebook Lending Service
Jun 15, 2011In a surprising move, library equipment manufacturer 3M Library Systems announced in May that it would be unveiling a new ebook lending service for libraries—including an in-library “Discovery Terminal,” 3M eReaders, and 3M apps—at the 2011 American Library Association (ALA) annual conference in New Orleans. When launched, it would be a competitor to OverDrive, which currently dominates the library ebook market.
The service will make hosted, lendable ebooks available to libraries, with a selection of ebooks from publishers including Random House and Independent Publishers Group. Matt Tempelis, 3M Library Systems’ global business manager, said that another “very large” publisher had also already signed on but had yet to be announced and that talks are ongoing with other publishers.
The ebooks available under the 3M system would follow the one book/one user model and use the EPUB format as well as Adobe digital rights management (DRM), as OverDrive’s ebooks do. They would be readable on the iPad, iPhone, Barnes and Noble’s Nook, laptop and desktop computers, and Android devices, among other equipment. Notably, the list does not currently include the best-selling ereader, Amazon’s Kindle; OverDrive and Amazon had previously announced that OverDrive titles will be readable on Kindles later this year.
The ebooks would also be compatible with 3M’s own eReader device, a number of which would be included as part of the service for patrons to check out. The 3M Discovery Terminal, featuring a touch-screen interface, would also be included in the subscription plan; in-library patrons could use it to browse and check out ebook titles, but the content could also be browsed and downloaded online and via 3M apps.
Market test in July
After the launch at ALA, Tempelis said, a market test will be conducted starting in July, with a further rollout expected in early fall. During the market test, various subscription plans for libraries, with potentially different amounts of equipment or numbers of ebooks to start off with, would be tested and determined.
One as-yet-unknown element of the new system is its ease of use for patrons, which has been a sticking point for some librarians using OverDrive’s system. For example, at LJ-led panels at the Tools of Change conference earlier this year and at BookExpo America in late May, librarian Katie Dunneback of East Central Library Services, Bettendorf, IA, pointed out that it took nearly two dozen steps to download an OverDrive ebook and transfer it to a device.
EBSCO IPHONE APP SIMPLIFIES USER AUTHENTICATION
Want EBSCOhost content access? There’s an app for that—recently rolled out and freely available from Apple’s iTunes App Store.
In many ways, the app resembles the company’s EBSCOhost Mobile website, which debuted in 2009, but features device-specific functionality including simplified user authentication. Once the app is downloaded and the patron goes to a library’s EBSCOhost platform to receive an authentication key, it is valid for nine months.
EBSCOhost Mobile often has a more complicated authentication process, depending on the method the individual library has chosen to use. Meanwhile, Gale since 2009 has pushed the bounds on iPhone- and iPad-specific applications that authenticate automatically based on a user’s proximity to a subscribing library.
The new EBSCOhost app makes it possible for users to save articles for offline reading, and PDF articles (or links to articles in other formats) can be emailed. The app also enables use of device-specific features of the iPhone, such as the horizontal “landscape mode” and “cover flow” navigation.
It works on the iPod Touch and the iPad, though the display is not full-scale on the iPad version; it also does not allow for printing documents from the iPad. A more refined version of the iPad app is in the works, according to Ron Burns, senior director of software product management at EBSCO Publishing, which would also include additional ebook content. (EBSCO acquired NetLibrary in March 2010.)
A version of the app for Android devices is due to be released later this year.
U. OF MICHIGAN TO IDENTIFY HATHITRUST'S ORPHAN WORKS
The University of Michigan (UM) Library’s Copyright Office announced the launch of a new, HathiTrust-funded research project to identify in-copyright “orphan works” in HathiTrust’s vast digital repository.
Orphan works are defined as out-of-print works protected by copyright but where the current rights holders are unknown or unable to be located. The new project will initially concentrate on American works, published between 1923 and 1963, that have been determined already to be in-copyright by UM’s Copyright Review Management System (CRMS). (The CRMS project, separate from this one, aims to find previously unknown public-domain works in the HathiTrust collection.)
The orphan works project is currently hammering out procedures and practices for the research with just a few part-time staff as it gets up and running, according to Melissa Levine, UM’s lead copyright officer.
Orphans were a major factor in the lawsuit that spawned the Google Books settlement, which was rejected by Judge Denny Chin this past March in part owing to concerns over how orphan works would be handled by Google under the deal. There may eventually be a settlement in that case, but there remains the daunting problem of identifying orphan works—and there may be a huge number of them. John Wilkin, the executive director of HathiTrust and an associate university librarian at UM, estimated in a report in February that fully half of the HathiTrust corpus were orphans—more than 2.5 million works.
About 6.4 million volumes, or 73 percent of the HathiTrust collection, are currently under copyright—but the number of orphan works among them remains a mystery.
UM staff have started to do research into a limited number of in-copyright works, using publicly available resources to determine whether a work is still in print and available—and to see where the research hits dead ends. (In this early stage, different reviewers will get the same books in a double-blind review, to evaluate how researchers are gathering information and how they address assumptions about rights status.)
If the research into the status of a work hits a wall, the project may simply publicize the work’s bibliographic information, in the hope that a rights holder will surface to claim rights. If they do, that would be considered a success, Levine said, because then the HathiTrust could ask the rights holder directly whether they want their work to be freely available online.
But what happens if no rights holder is found? The “obvious question,” Levine said, is whether U.S. copyright law, as it stands now, gives libraries leeway to make use of orphan works for scholarly purposes—a question that remains up in the air.
BOOPSIE APP FEATURE: SCAN ISBN BARCODES, PLACE HOLDS
Boopsie launched a new mobile app feature, BookLook, that lets patrons scan an item’s ISBN barcode with a smartphone and place a hold on it at their library branch. This latest app follows on the company’s BookCheck app feature, rolled out in April, which allows patrons to scan library barcodes on books or other items and self-check them out (see InfoTech, LJ 5/15/11, p. 18).
The new feature, part of Boopsie’s newly launched Optimum app package, lets patrons scan the ISBN barcode of any item, anywhere; the app then checks the number against the catalog of the patron’s local library to see if any branches own it. If so, the patron may immediately place a hold on the item. The scanning capability works with Apple, Android, and BlackBerry devices.
The feature is similar to one included in SirsiDynix’s BookMyne app, which works exclusively with SirsiDynix’s Symphony and Horizon integrated library systems (ILSs). BookCheck interacts with ILSs via a SIP2 interface, allowing it to be compatible with several different systems, including SirsiDynix’s.
INTERNET ARCHIVE'S POTENTIAL "LIBRARY OPTION"
During a May 23 session at the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) Digital Book 2011 conference held alongside BookExpo America, Peter Brantley of the Internet Archive (IA) spoke about the organization’s Open Library project—and a potential future “Library Option” that could provide a model for publishers to make ebooks more easily lendable.
The “Lending of Digital Books” session—which also featured OverDrive marketing associate Dan Stasiewski—was largely geared toward introducing publishers to library ebook lending and, as such, was mostly old hat to those in the library world. LJ readers, for example, will be familiar with the Open Library’s unique license-free ebook lending model (see InfoTech, LJ 4/1/11, p. 18).
But there was at least one new wrinkle: IA, Brantley said, is thinking about giving publishers a Library Option for their ebooks—a sort of subscription plan in which a publisher would “automatically route [the Open Library] a copy of ebooks that are coming out.” IA, he said, “could compensate them on a regular basis for those titles.”
Such an automatic model could be a fast and easy way to give the public access to lendable ebooks, while also compensating publishers in a systematic way. One stumbling block, however, is that many larger publishers are averse to the Open Library’s license-free model, in which IA buys ebooks from publishers outright before lending them. Still, many small independent publishers could take them up on it. It’s another example of IA thinking outside the box—and an idea worth watching.
INFOTECH BRIEFS
EasyBib released a mobile app version of its citation management service for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad in May. The app includes an ISBN scanning tool and integration with services from OCLC, Credo Reference, ABC-Clio, and Google.
Materials from the collections of the U.S. Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) and the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) will be covered by the Primo Central Index of scholarly content, Ex Libris Group announced in May. More than 90 journal titles from BNA and the MLA International Bibliography collection will be included.
EBSCO announced in May that it had reached an agreement with the National Library of the Czech Republic to integrate metadata into EBSCO Discovery Service from the Manuscriptorium project. The project aims to provide online access to all digitized pre-1800 historical book content.
