Ebrary's New Short-Term Ebook Loan Service Triggered by Use

Ebrary, a longtime player in the academic ebook market, recently announced a new option for its academic library customers: usage-triggered short-term ebook loans, which can be used in conjunction with the company's patron-driven acquisition (PDA) program or as a stand-alone service. The library would only be charged for a loan after a patron meets a minimum threshold of usage of the ebook.

The new model, currently in live beta-testing for the next month, would allow users to borrow an ebook from ebrary's catalog for a term, set by the library, of either one day or one week.

Each loan would cost a library ten to 30 percent of the ebook price, depending on the length of the loan and ebrary's agreement with the publisher. Libraries will be able to offer patrons up to three short-term loans per title, after which libraries would be required to purchase the title for continued access, though money spent on the short-term loans would not be counted toward the purchase price.

According to Matt Barnes, VP of marketing at ebrary, just under 70 percent of the titles available through ebrary's PDA program and about half of all ebrary titles are available for short-term loan.

In addition, he told LJ, the company is planning on also offering 14-day and 28-day loans for the academic market; with pricing still being worked out. A short-term loan model for ebrary's corporate and government customers is also in development, he said.

The short-term loans are also available through YBP Library Services' Demand Driven Acquisition service, which uses the ebrary platform to deliver academic content.

Pricing for the stand-alone short-term loan program includes a one-time platform fee.

Pulling the trigger
A key aspect of the model is usage-triggering: if a patron borrows an ebook and makes fewer than ten page-turns or reads the ebook for less than ten minutes, and does not print or copy any part of the book, the library is not charged for the loan.

Competitor Ebook Library (EBL) has offered automatically triggered or librarian-mediated short-term loans since 2004, and similarly supports a no-obligation browse period. In EBL's case, patrons may access the full text of an ebook for up to five minutes; after that a patron must make a short-term loan to continue accessing the book.

EBL short-term loan costs range from five percent to 30 percent of the ebook list price, depending on the length of the loan—between one and 28 days—and the publisher of the ebook. As with ebrary, short-term loan costs are not counted toward an eventual ebook purchase.

Last month, OCLC and Ingram announced a service, set to roll out in June, which would let libraries use OCLC's WorldCat Resource Sharing to loan Ingram MyiLibrary ebooks to patrons for 15 percent of the ebook price. Ebrary's is one of the more recent entries in the PDA market, rolling out the option in October of last year, competing with similar options from EBL, NetLibrary, and Ingram's MyiLibrary. Ebrary has also been taking aim at the public library market, signing Oregon's largest public library, the Multnomah County Library, this past March.

Ebrary's acquisition by ProQuest was announced in January 2011 just before the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting.