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Technically Speaking

By David Dorman
American Libraries Columnist
ddorma@ltnet.ltls.org

Library consultant for the Lincoln Trail Libraries System in Champaign, Illinois.

Column for August 2000

ASP It Happens

The idea of a library managing its collections by leasing access to an Internet service instead of purchasing and operating its own library-management system has just received a giant boost from two developments in the ILS marketplace. CASPR Library Systems, which supplies library-management systems to over 10,000 small libraries, has become an Application Service Provider, or ASP (industry jargon for a company that leases access to application software that is hosted at a remote Web site); and Epixtech has just inked a contract with the Chicago Library System to provide some of its member libraries with a Horizon system that will reside at a remote location and be accessible over the Internet.

CASPR launched its Web-hosted library system earlier this year at the National Online Conference. Called LibraryCom, the service allows a library to use its software as an online library-management system without purchasing any hardware or software. All the library needs is one or more workstations connected to the Internet and running a standard browser. The company charges $50 per “seat” per year for the service, with the first seat being free. If the system gains functionality comparable to what other small systems in its class offer, its low cost could have a significant effect in the marketplace. For more information, call CASPR at 800-852-2777 or e-mail sales@caspr.com.

Epixtech, which inaugurated its ASP service last year, will be providing Chicago Library System members with access to a server hosted in an Internet Data Center run by Exodus Communications, a firm specializing in providing data centers for companies leasing access to application software. As bandwidth becomes less expensive and more reliable, more and more libraries may follow CLS’s lead and decide it makes more sense to lease access to application software than to make a major investment in a system that will undoubtedly become obsolete within a few years. For more information, contact Virginia Black at 800-288-8020.

E-Book Bits

These days I could write an entire column just on the e-book news that comes out every month. NetLibrary has announced an alliance with Xerox, Sprout, and Bookmobile for print-on-demand (POD) services. Although the POD services will initially be geared to the retail market, NetLibrary is not ruling out the possibility of selling hard copy to libraries as well. The service is expected to launch in the fourth quarter of 2000. The company currently offers access to 18,000 copyrighted books and 4,000 public-domain books, and is adding books at the rate of 100 per day.

Epixtech became the second ILS vendor (following Innovative Interfaces) to agree to interface the management of NetLibrary e-books with its software. . . . Lightning Source, a spinoff of Ingram Book Group that makes e-texts available, has just entered into a deal with Microsoft to make its e-books available via Microsoft Reader technology. . . . E-Ink, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, company that hopes to produce a form of electronically “re-writeable paper” within four to five years, just got a huge infusion of cash from Lucent Technologies as well as a license from Bell Labs to use plastic resistor technology that produces flexible transistors in a process similar to silk-screening.

Although NetLibrary has had the library e-book market all to itself for the past year, that is about to change. Two new companies, each with its own unique marketing and pricing models are about to compete, albeit indirectly, for the same dollars. Ebrary will be making thousands of online books viewable over the Web at no cost, but users will pay for the right to copy or print a chunk of the book; libraries will get 5% of the revenues. As its Web site states: “We have created a partnership model for academic, special, and public libraries in which the library partner generates a new revenue stream by giving its patrons access to Ebrary’s vast collection of titles.” Ebrary is betting that libraries and other institutions will use its service to gain a new source of revenue by charging user fees to those willing to pay by the piece.

The company also expects to offer libraries digitization services and free access by the library’s patrons to those digitized resources, in exchange for giving Ebrary the right to charge others for the information. The service is expected to be launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October.

Questia is yet another company with lots of investment money behind it that expects to begin marketing an initial collection of 50,000 e-books early in 2001. It is focusing on digitized books that are be used by college students and researchers and will charge a flat annual fee to each end user for online access to the entire collection. According to a company spokesperson, library staff and their patrons will be able to search the Questia database, but only fee-paying subscribers will be able to look at the full text. The company insisted that it will price the service so “every student can afford it,” but the fee level has not yet been set.

Each participating publisher will be entitled to a proportion of Questia’s total revenue that depends on the percentage of use that publisher’s books get in comparison to the use of the entire collection. The company has hired a staff of academic collection-development librarians to select books for inclusion. The books are being encoded with an XML data type definition, and all footnotes will be hyperlinked to other books if they are included in the collection.

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