Vendors

OCLC Makes Offer for Netlibrary

Subject to the approval of the bankruptcy court, OCLC Online Computer Library Center announces that it has made an offer to purchase substantially all the assets of netLibrary and assume certain netLibrary liabilities. netLibrary is a leading provider of eBooks, eTextbooks and Internet-based content/collection management services.


Concurrently, netLibrary announced that it has voluntarily filed a petition with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Colorado for relief under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The transaction includes a loan from OCLC, to be repaid upon the consummation of the asset sale, to fund netLibrary\'s on-going operations through the transition period. OCLC\'s purchase of netLibrary\'s assets and its operating-funds loan to netLibrary are both subject to approval of the bankruptcy court.

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Latest On NetLibrary

The DailyCamera.com reports that NetLibrary has a buyout offer, and An announcement of a possible sale could come as soon as a day or two.

RockyMountainNews says they are being sued by a venture capital partner for allegedly cooking company books with inflated sales figures. They are saying that the company had overstated annual revenues by more than 30 percent.

Scholastic to Publish Third E-Book Ahead of Print Version

Scholastic is releasing another of its books in electronic format ahead of the print version. This one is part of the \"Dear America\" Series. According to Michael Jacobs, senior vice president of their trade division \"We\'re approaching all our e-book efforts as ways to promote our printed properties, so we\'re not necessarily going to gauge the success of this e-book project solely on the basis of whether we sell a lot of copies, although we\'d like to do that.\" If you hurry and buy it before Thanksgiving, you can get it for $1.95. more

Gale Group: Breaking Through Content Barriers

Bob Cox passed along This Interview with the CEO and the executive vice president of The Gale Group from eContent Magazine.

They talk about the Internet\'s impact on information aggregation and distribution, the importance of quality indexing, and maintaining a tight grip on the content you put out there.

A Look at Questia The Online Library

Adam Wright writes \"
This story
is very interesting about the owner of Questia.com, an online library. I believe it is worth a read because it shows how persistance can really pay off. It is also interesting because of its library angle. \"

Williams says he will survive because he has a pure online product. He has no inventory to worry about.

Behind the doors at a sex how-to publishing house

The San Francisco Chronicle recently featured an article about a local publisher of sex how-to books on spending the past twelve years as a sort of leather-friendly Hints from Heloise.

(It\'s not only a fascinating look at the world of independent publishing, where you\'re not likely to end up in the reviews in Library Journal. It\'s also a chance for me to congratulate my friends (full disclosure, eh) at Greenery Press on \"building better perverts\" for so many years.)

I can personally vouch for Big Big Love, which corrects many of the fat-phobic myths perpetrated by The Joy of Sex. If you\'ve got the latter but not the former, your collection could stand to be more fat-friendly.

This is just one of the many indie publishers whose names aren\'t as well-known as the big guys\'. Why not add a comment to this article to mention your favorite underappreciated publishing house?

NetLibrary On The Ropes

Lee Hadden writes: \"netLibrary (NetLibrary) of Boulder, Colorado, is going broke
and is looking for a buyer. With the recent market problems since late last
year, and especially since September 11th, their cash flow has been
insufficient to keep the company afloat. netLibrary provides digital
textbooks and other reading matter as a service for public, corporate and
academic libraries.
For now, netLibrary has asked that current employees return to work at
drastically reduced pay. Everybody will be paid the same- about $360.00 a
week, which is about what they would get on unemployment benefits. Since
everyone is getting the same pay, everyone is working at executive levels
claim one employee.
Sigh. Will they have a virtual remainder sale for unsold e-books?
Read more about it.
This may be your last chance to see my e-book Reliving The Civil War\"

OCLC Seeks $30 Million to Upgrade

OCLC is seeking $30 million to upgrade its infrastructure and to give itself more room to grow. According to OCLC, 2,000 to 3,000 new libraries froim around the world come on board each year. more... from GCBA.

FirsrSearch Statistcs Problem!

Bill Drew writes \"I just discovered and reported to OCLC a very critical error in the reports generated for FirstSearch Usage statistics. The tech support contact told me that they are aware of it and have been for some time. It is fixed with reports after this Month. They are unable (or unwilling) to fix it for statistics generated before that date. What I found was in doing the Searches Used report where individual databases are used, if a database was not used for the month I selected to generate the report on it does not appear in the report at all.

More.... -- Read More

Update on Bookmobile Concept

Steven Bell writes \"I came across this in an Educause e-news report. Therefore I don\'t have a URL for the orginal report from Wireless Newsfactor. Thought you might be interested though.


The Community College Foundation of California promotes
technology awareness in poor urban areas with eBuses. An eBus
is a mobile computer lab with workstations and a satellite
linkup that travels through underprivileged neighborhoods,
offering computer training and Web access services.
\"We can just park the bus and people come right
up, We\'ll park in front of a library, do some
training, and then show people that the same technology is
available inside that library.\"
(Wireless Newsfactor, 23 August 2001)\"


They have a nice WebSite and the buses even have WebCams. I think we ran something on this already, but it\'s neat stuff.

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