Stephen Cole, owner of eBooks.com, is an old-time bookseller whose academically oriented library branch, EBL, is notable for a variety of e-lending models. It lets libraries allow more than one copy of a book at once to be floating around. Good stuff. eBook.com offers more than 40,000 books.
Now they’ll reach a wider audience through a new pact with YPB Library Services, a Baker & Taylor division that calls itself “the world’s leading provider of materials to academic libraries.” The extra books will be out there in first part of 2007. Congrats to Stephen.
More details from news release, spotted at DearAuthor.com.
EBL’s e-lending model is something public libraries should be looking at too.
With only two major vendors selling e-books to public libraries it would be nice to have another vendor to provide some competition.
With print books libraries are always struggling to have enough copies of the latest bestseller available so customers don’t have to wait six months for their book. The one e-book one user model counteracts one the major benefits of e-books to libraries. That is that an e-book file can be used by many users at the same time. Its use is limited only by licensing/DRM.
NetLibrary e-audiobooks can be checked out by more than one person but not their e-books. OverDrive has only a small collection of e-audiobooks that are always available. Everything else is one book one user and requires the customer to place a hold if it is not available.
Neither has the EBL feature that allows enables “a library to ‘rent’ an e-book to satisfy a unique patron request, without having to pay full price or to wait for an inter-library loan.” That is good service to libraries’ customers.