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From a M-H News Release:

McGraw-Hill Professional announces the launch of the McGraw-Hill eBook Library,www.MHeBookLibrary.com, a state-of-the-art platform delivering unparalleled access to the publisher’s premium content for institutions around the world.  Responding to librarians’ and patrons’ evolving digital information needs, McGraw-Hill has taken the revolutionary step of providing unlimited concurrent usage to the digital library so patrons can access high-quality curated content from world-renowned authorities.

A powerful online resource, the McGraw-Hill eBook Library provides more than 1,000 titles in collections that are continuously updated with new eBooks.  Users can access hundreds of thousands of pages of content from authors who are leaders in the areas of Engineering, Computing, Business, Medical, and Student Study Aides.  This exceptional collection highlights the depth and breadth of McGraw-Hill’s works, from business classics like Stocks for the Long Run and Juran’s Quality Handbook to acclaimed First Aid Medical test prep titles to the popular Demystified and Schaum’s College Outlines series.

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The McGraw-Hill eBook Library At-A-Glance Facts:

Unlimited concurrent usage
More than 300,000 pages of content
1000+ titles in the areas of:
Engineering
Computing
Academic Study Aids and test prep
Medical and First Aid
Business
New books added throughout the year at no additional cost to subscriber
Flexible subscription options ranging from 1-4 years
Program features
Note taking feature
Bookmarking
Customer usage stats
DRM
Printing

Direct to McGraw-Hill eBook Library Web Site
Info Specifically for Librarians

Complete News Release

Via INFO-docket.com

5 COMMENTS

  1. @Common sense: If you taking HC’s detractors at face value, this is no improvement. There’s still a “time bomb” in the “books”; they’re still going to “self destruct” at the end of the subscription period. And the only additional right granted is concurrent access; it doesn’t meet any of the other demands that librarians were making.

    The lack of limits (or direct metering) on concurrent access is very, very interesting. I guess this is allowed by the references to “permitted sites” and “permitted IP addresses” — they’ve worked out how to prevent, for example, the entire population of China paying a nominal fee to subscribe to my local library.

    There’s also an implication that they’re monitoring usage, and they’ll be in an even stronger position than Overdrive to re-negotiate higher rates as usage rises, at the end of the subscription period. Libraries would effectively end up being billed based on their size. From the POV of library budgets, I can imagine this is a better fit than other models.

    I’d say the improvement is that MGH are putting a positive effort into this, as opposed to sitting back and licensing books to others, and then complaining when it doesn’t work out or appearing to cynically add extra restrictions once libraries have started to rely on them.

    But don’t let’s be disingenuous. HC sells fiction. MGH’s library is non-fiction. The same models may not work as well for them.

    I’m plucking this out of the air; in reality I don’t have a clue what the numbers look like. But MGH don’t have to worry about the spectre of the latest Harry Potter being borrowed simultaneously by everyone. That’s an extreme example, but it applies to a lot of less widely popular series: if people find it in the library, and they can read the “next one” there as soon as it’s available — bang goes the publisher’s biggest revenue stream (electronic or otherwise). And we do actually have to pay authors to write the books at some point :).

  2. @Binko: That’s an odd phrasing. In what sense?

    If you mean they’re effectively lying about the implied “this publisher’s library program isn’t evil like HaperCollins”, that doesn’t seem very fair.

    Go to Amazon.com and search for “McGraw Hill” in the Books department. Look at the header under “Kindle edition”. You’ll see a suspiciously similar number: 1099.

    …it’s not just a website… you don’t tend to set up whole a new business model when you’re not committed to it, _just_ so you can rake in good PR to boost the non-digital business.

    TBH, the “spin” part of it is listing “DRM” as a feature and then not listing the supported DRM systems. But I’m sure librarians aren’t stupid; the question “Does this work on the Kindle” (and hopefully “what does this work on _other_ than the Kindle; what _doesn’t_ it work on?”) is going to get asked at the appropriate point.

  3. Don’t get excited, this is just a database of their backlist, not eBooks that download. Other publishers, such as Gale and O’Reilly also get away with calling their databases “eBooks.”

    But at least tablets mean you’re not tied to a computer to read them.

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