Netlibrary

A product of the nonprofit OCLC Online Computer Learning Center, netLibrary, is a full-text electronic book collection that encompasses a variety of content options designed to help academic, public, school (K–12), and corporate libraries meet the information needs of the populations they serve. Because netLibrary is a Web-based product, a subscribing library's users have access to the collection twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, from any computer with an Internet connection.

Basing its collection development policies on the regulations of the Research Libraries Group, netLibrary requires that the bulk of the materials it acquires fall into the upper 50% of the specified date range limit of two to five years. At the research level (level 4 in netLibrary's Collection Development Conspectus), netLibrary's focus is expanding its collection in the fields of education, business, library science, medicine, computer science, and engineering. Older works are included as well and are considered for inclusion based on merit. Incorporated in all netLibrary subscriptions, the publicly accessible collection is intended for both the recreational and educational use of library users and includes literary classics and other works in the public domain. Popular titles in consumer health abound, and, in the experience of this reviewer's place of employment, a mid-size academic medical research library, some of the heaviest users of the collection are faculty, staff, and students in the nursing school using nonmedical support materials.

TitleSelect™, netLibrary's catalog, features a wide range of titles (more than 62,000 titles at the time of this publication) from more than 325 publishers and allows searching by predefined categories, keyword, or using Boolean operators. Results can be compiled as lists that can be saved and viewed, edited, or deleted later. These lists can then be submitted electronically to netLibrary as purchasing orders, which can be tracked through the TitleSelect feature.

User accounts must initiate from an Internet protocol (IP)—authenticated machine located at the member institution or library. Libraries can update or revise authorized IP ranges simply by sending an email to netLibrary support. Once users successfully create accounts from an authorized IP address, they can then connect to netLibrary from any machine with an Internet connection, regardless of location, to briefly browse titles or log in and “check out” eBook selections for longer periods of time.

The site boasts a comprehensive set of reader support features. Collections are searchable by every word in every book or by words within a selected eBook. The default search screen is the advanced search, including title, author, subject, keyword, publisher, full text, publication year, ISBN, and language of publication. Breadcrumbing allows the user to retrace search paths during a session, and the Toolbar offers several value-added features in addition to the eBook content. The TOC tab allows readers to jump to various sections of the selected eBook; the eBook Info tab lists bibliographic information about the current selection; and the Search tab enables keyword searching in the current selection or in the entire collection. Other tabs allow for making as many as forty separates notes in the reading, bookmarking of pages (up to ten per book), and embedded links to Houghton Mifflin's American Heritage™ Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition (2000), Roget's Thesaurus, and both English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English functions.

Young or novice readers may appreciate netLibrary's many bells and whistles, but the inclusion of these features and their prominence on the screen (in addition to the netLibrary banner personalized with the subscriber's institution logo) greatly reduces the amount of space for the text content. This fact, along with the implausibility of eBooks for, say, beach reading, should leave little worry that electronic books may be advancing the decline of traditional printed books.

The unstable fiscal history of netLibrary arguably offers further indication that this will not be the case. Founded in 1998, the Boulder, Colorado—based netLibrary filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the fall of 2001 and was subsequently purchased by OCLC in January 2002 [1]. Offices and operations were permitted to remain in Colorado, but, by April 2002, netLibrary had a new vice president, new stipulations limiting its initial policy of permanent access for its customers, and a revised pricing structure.

In an effort to reinvent netLibrary and revive the electronic book market, OCLC and netLibrary have sought to create alliances with some of publishing's major players. In the fall of 2002, Gale announced it would partner with the electronic book provider to make its collection of standard reference books available online for netLibrary users [2]. In the spring of 2003, netLibrary and EBSCO unveiled eBooks on Demand, a pilot project to grant netLibrary users short-term access to more than 1,200 Taylor & Francis titles [3], and, in April, the OCLC subsidiary teamed with Elsevier to provide electronic viewing of more than 300 science and technology titles to netLibrary subscribers [4].

The site currently offers two payment options: prepaid ongoing access, a one-time cost comprising 55% of the retail cost of each title selected, and the annual service fee model, which is 15% of the retail cost and is payable on a yearly basis. For additional information, contact your library's OCLC regional service provider (http://www.oclc.org/contacts/regional/), or fill out a product inquiry form online (http://www.oclc.org/oclc/forms/inquiry.htm).

While consortial purchases are possible, a number of netLibrary's publishing partners will not allow some of their titles to be included in library consortia subscriptions. Conversely, the solo hospital librarian who may not have affiliation with a regional OCLC provider may find it difficult to quickly and easily obtain adequate purchasing information. For hospital and medical libraries contemplating the decision to add netLibrary to their electronic resources catalog, much may be gained, especially in the way of consumer health titles. But because netLibrary's content is solely dependent on titles publishers are willing to supply, a mixed bag of the valuable, the obscure, and the downright mediocre is, quite frankly, all one can expect when purchasing a netLibrary subscription.