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Newspapers-on-Demand @ Your Library
Library consultant for the Lincoln Trail Libraries System in Champaign, Illinois. Column for June/July 2003 It’s funny how we first became aware of all this. Last year a tourist must have walked into the library to look around, and wound up in our newspaper reading gallery with a newspaper he had brought in with him. And once he’d finished reading it, he must have left his newspaper behind. When we saw it, we couldn’t believe it. It was unlike any other newspaper we had seen. It was printed on 11×17-inch paper, and was distributed by a company called NewspaperDirect, but otherwise seemed to have all the content of a regular newspaper. When we saw that NewspaperDirect was a local company, we decided to investigate." This is the way Thomas Long, a librarian in the Vancouver (British Columbia) Public Library’s Newspapers and Magazines Division, describes how VPL library staff first became aware of NewpaperDirect’s print-on-demand service. What he learned when he contacted the company was that since 1999 it has offered a service to hotels, cruise ships, retail outlets, and corporations that allows a customer to instantly print the latest edition of dozens of newspapers from around the world. What NewpaperDirect learned was they might very well have a market opportunity with libraries. As a result of Long’s initiative, in December 2002 NewspaperDirect installed a printer in the main branch of VPL and arranged a pilot project based on cost-recovery pricing that for both the company and the library represented a marketing test bed. "What the VPL is doing is quite different from NewspaperDirect’s other customers, who offer print-on-demand," said Long. "We treat this like a subscription, and have selected a core group of papers based on a survey of our users. The main attraction for us right now is to provide timely access at an affordable cost." As a result of the test, VPL has a print-on-demand newspaper service it is very pleased with and NewpaperDirect has developed pricing and marketing targeted to libraries. If a library uses its own printer, NewspaperDirect charges a one-time fee of $500, which includes print-station setup and configuration as well as training. Each edition of any newspaper printed on demand will cost between 80 cents and $1.10, depending on how many copies are printed per month. There is a minimum charge of $110 per month. Technical support and newspaper-roster updates come with the service at no extra charge. Special hardware pricing can be arranged if the library wishes to obtain printers from NewspaperDirect as well. A library can choose to use the service to print out regular daily editions of newspapers that are always in demand—as VPL has so far chosen to do—or it can choose to print out editions on demand from a roster of about 170 titles (and growing steadily) for newspapers that are requested only occasionally. "Not only does printing-on-demand get the most recent edition into the hands of patrons days faster than many of our preprinted newspaper subscriptions," said Long. "In some cases it is even cheaper, especially when you consider that the Sunday edition is the same price as other days." Back issues may be made available for selected titles, depending on what NewspaperDirect can negotiate with publishers. The company is also negotiating with publishers to enable the back page of each newspaper edition to be reserved for customized news or information created by the library. For more information on NewspaperDirect’s pricing and services, visit www.newspaperdirect.com. NCIP on the MoveThe promise of seamless interlibrary loan and circulation transactions involving multiple library systems is moving closer to reality with progress in NCIP deployment. NCIP (NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol) is a successor to, and a more generalized version of, the 3M Standard Interchange Protocols (SIP and its successor SIP2), which were developed by 3M for its self-checkout stations. Last spring, TLC and Ameritech (now Dynix) demonstrated proof-of-concept of the NCIP tool kits they had developed by exchanging NCIP messages between their two systems. Recently Dynix announced that it had implemented the request half of the "broker controlled" direct consortial NCIP profile in its Universal Resource Sharing Application (URSA) ILL system. This is one of four direct consortial profiles defined by the NCIP development committee. The URSA implementation is in the final stages of testing with the Ex Libris Aleph 500 system. The Boston Library Consortium, which uses URSA to coordinate interlibrary loan among multiple ILS systems and vendors, includes Boston College, which uses the Aleph 500 system and which is doing the testing. Aleph 500 is the first ILS to support the response half of the "broker controlled" NCIP profile in a general release version, but others are on the way. As of mid-April, Dynix URSA developers were testing the profile with middleware developed by Sirsi for its Unicorn system, and Dynix itself has plans to make its Horizon system fully compliant with the response half of the profile by the end of the year. In the meantime, OCLC has volunteered to be the maintenance agency for the standard, and it has implemented several authentication-related NCIP request messages to control access to the FirstSearch service; but so far no ILS vendors have tested the relevant NCIP response messages with OCLC to confirm interoperability. OCLC also has plans to implement a substantial portion of the request half of the "broker controlled" direct consortial profile in its FirstSearch service. Contracts and Agreements
Richardson (Tex.) Independent School District, for 59 school libraries; replaces the Dynix Scholar system. Plum Creek Library System, headquartered in Worthington, Minnesota, for the system’s 33 library sites; replaces Dynix. Mary Wood Weldon Memorial Library in Glasgow, Kentucky; newly automated. Metropolitan Police Department Library of Washington, D.C.; newly automated. International Reading Association in Newark, Delaware; newly automated.
Southeastern Libraries Cooperating (SELCO), a public library system headquartered in Rochester, Minnesota, that manages a multitype shared library management system for 59 libraries in its service area; replaces a Sirsi DRA Classic. George E. Magnin Medical Library of Marshfield Clinic in Marshfield, Wisconsin, serving northern, central, eastern, and western Wisconsin; replaces an EOSi Glas system.
CTW Library Consortium, made up of Connecticut College in New London, Trinity College in Hartford, and Wesleyan University in Middletown; replaces a Sirsi Unicorn system.
The Cardiff Council library service in Wales, for the 20 public libraries operated by the council; replaces a Dynix Classic system. Bibliocentre, a consortium of Ontario community colleges headquartered in Toronto, for 13 of its 24 member college libraries; replaces a Sirsi DRA Classic.
College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts; replaces a Sirsi DRA system. Gail Borden Public Library District in Elgin, Illinois; replaces a Dynix Classic system. Concord (N.H.) Public Library; replaces a Gaylord Galaxy system. Monroeville (Pa.) Public Library; replaces a Sirsi DRA system.
American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the British School at Athens, Greece, for a joint catalog; newly automated.
Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville; to replace a homegrown system.
Miami–Dade County (Fla.) Law Library; newly automated. Alliances and Acquisitions
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By David Dorman