E-Book 2003, Print Collections, E-Books and Beyond, A Conference Report
Carol Ann Hughes
We are getting close to conquering the "form factor" with e-books. Thus Jay Jordan, President and CEO of OCLC, began a very interesting one-and-a-half-day conference in May 2003 sponsored by Blackwell's Book Services, The Ohio State University Libraries, OCLC Digital & Preservation Resources, OCLC Institute, and The University of Michigan. Cliff Lynch echoed these sentiments in confirming that multi-purpose devices seem to have overtaken"reading devices" as the equipment of choice for users. But the conference did not focus on hardware and software features of e-books. Most of the conference was about usage studies for e-books and what veterans of the marketplace have learned in the last two years.
Although Steve Potash, President and CEO of Overdrive, asserted that digital rights management is actually "liberating" because without it the content owners "won't play," most presenters framed their remarks toward strategies that open up e-book content for creative and flexible use. Several presenters confirmed the idea that at this time e-books do not cannibalize sales for print versions although e-versions might affect print sales in the future as the aggregate of titles available increases into a critical mass. The differences between the markets for e-books as separate pieces of content and e-book database products that present full text (both commercial and library-based) through a browser were also explored. Sales of e-books are steadily trending upwards but they still represent less than 0.1 percent of total revenues for those who sell them, according to information gathered by the Association of American Publishers.
From the library viewpoint, presenters from Michigan and Virginia discussed their experiences in creating and managing massive amounts of content. Tom Sanville, Executive Director of OhioLINK, noted that this consortium has raised the threshold on the amount of use a title must receive before it is purchased because e-books have fundamentally changed the dynamic of browsing among titles in a catalog. Louise Edwards, JISC Collections Manager, noted that librarians in the UK are beginning to make joint marketing agreements with publishers to promote e-books to users. A thoughtful final word was offered by a professor from Northwestern University who noted that in a world of "users" rather than "readers," e-books present a fundamental change in our documentary infrastructure, the implications of which we have not yet fully grasped.
Attendees were quite diverse, with a substantial representation from the publishing industry. Overall the mix of points of view was enlightening,invigorating, and resulted in a highly successful event. Proceedings available at: http://digitalcooperative.oclc.org/ebook
Carol Ann Hughes (hughes@lib.uci.edu) is the Associate University Librarian for Public Services at the University of California, Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California, USA.
