Vendors

From Business First-Columbus...

\"The Online Computer Library Center has created a new division to help its member libraries catalog and preserve their digital resources. The division will be responsible for helping libraries create, access and preserve existing digital collections; collaborate to build new digital collections; and learn about digitization and preservation issues. It will house the OCLC\'s Digital Archive, the Digital and Preservation Co-op and the Digital and Preservation Resources Centers.\" From More

steven bell writes \"In the December 10 issue of BusinessWeek the Technology columnist, Stephen Wildstrom, tries out Questia and likes it, but has some doubts about its current feasibility (obviously written before last week\'s news about more layoffs at Questia).He writes, \"it\'s easy to see how online libraries could take a lot of the tedium out of research. I don\'t think they will ever replace the pleasures of browsing the stack of a serious research collections. As a lover of old-fashioned libraries, I certainly hope not.\" Who is he calling \"old-fashioned\"? Do you think he\'s visited his local academic library recently? I think not. The online version of this article is available only to subscribers. \"

From Excite News:

Pittsburgh-based Preservation Technologies, L.P., signed a new five-year contract with the Library of Congress (LC) to preserve over a million books and 5 to 7.5 million manuscript pages using its Bookkeeper process. This is the first step toward the LC\'s goal of preserving 8.5 million retrospective and new books over the next 30 years.

With strong support from Congress, LC has worked with Preservation Technologies since the mid-1990s to preserve hundreds of thousands of books. As the national library and the official library of the U.S. Congress, LC\'s mass deacidification efforts have focused primarily on its collection of \"Americana.\"

After rigorous research and review, the successful treatment of more than 300,000 books and the successful completion of a four-year contract, the new contract ensures that the Library of Congress and Preservation Technologies will continue to work together to preserve endangered volumes.

More.

The Houston Chronicle is Reporting Questia Media cut its workforce in half last week, reducing the number of employees to just 68, down from almost 300, because of lower than expected demand for its online library and research service.

\"We\'re seeing good week-over-week growth but not at an aggressive rate as we anticipated,\" said spokeswoman Ann Brimberry \"Our priorities now are to make the service work as well as we can for subscribers.\"

Props to Gary Price for this one.

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.

Full Release

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 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

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.

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.

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?

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 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.

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....

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.

For CNet News, Erich Luening writes...

\"Online retail giant Amazon.com is looking beyond individual consumers with a new program intended to attract organizations such as libraries, schools and businesses.
The new Corporate Accounts Program allows institutional purchasers to create a managed account with a payment method other than credit card, by which they can buy books, software, videos and other goods online, the company announced Wednesday. \"Whether it is local librarians ordering hard-to-find titles, corporate librarians purchasing training materials or small businesses buying software printers, these customers will now be able to use purchase orders as a method of payment at Amazon.com,\" Jason Kilar, vice president of media products at Amazon.com, said in a statement.\" more...

From The Business Journal (WI)...

Random House will soon be taking over operations of Golden Books, publishers of \"Little Golden Books.\" Classic Media will take over the entertainment division of the downed organization. The acquisition comes after a federal bankruptcy court approved the sale of the organization by \"a joint bid betwen Random House and Classic Media for $84.4 million plus liabilities.\" During its operational time, Golden Books published over 500,000 titles, including the favored \"Poky Little Puppy.\" more...

Found this one posted at CNet News.

\"Mary Meeker, the Morgan Stanley analyst once dubbed \"Queen of the Internet\" for her bullish reports on the industry, was named as a defendant in a pair of lawsuits Wednesday alleging she provided biased research on eBay and Amazon.com.\" more...

For The Houston Chronicle, Tom Fowler writes...

\"Questia Media continues to adjust its marketing strategy this summer with a plan to offer universities the ability to buy subscriptions for its online library and research service in bulk. The bulk purchase is something of a departure for Questia, which in the past was emphatic that it would only sell its $19.95 per month service to individuals. According to Michael Bell, VP of Academic Affairs at Elmhurst College \"Keeping the library staff involved in the use of Questia is important since the service had a tendency to raise the hackles of librarians initially. Questia has been seen by some as a replacement for the library, but it can\'t do that. For us it serves as an answer to a very tough challenge of trying to meet a variety of needs with a limited budget.\" more...

For The Dallas Morning News, Tim Wyatt has written an article on homework sites for kids to refresh their minds on what they may have lost during the summer. He\'s included some pretty cool links that are definitely worth checking out. [more...]

I came across this while doing one of those library things ... It seems that B & T and Gaylord have joined forces to develop a means of allowing libraries to download and circulate electronic text. This is what Katherine Blauer, the prez of Gaylord has to say: \"Truly efficient workflows for ordering, order acknowledgement and invoicing have been elusive in the world of acquisitions processing. Our close collaboration with Baker & Taylor will streamline the acquisitions process and reduce the amount of time it takes to get materials into the hands of library users.\" Yeah, but what\'s it gonna cost? [more...]