OECD is a publisher of both printed and electronic books. When thinking about
e-books we try and follow these principles:
- the e-book should exist as a facsimile of the printed book (ie PDF) even if
made available in html. Otherwise, readers may have trouble citing the work
correctly.
- added-value services (such as access to downloadable Excel spreadsheets)
should be accessible to both print and e-edition readers (why should print
readers be disadvantaged?)
- the content must be identical in all formats. If the content changes, then
we release a set of new editions in all formats (with new ISBNs), if we
didn't do this how would readers be confident they're working from the same
page?
- new e-editions don't replace previous e-editions online, we believe it is
important to keep the previous editions available online for
archival/historical purposes. This mimics what librarians do with print!
However, in writing this list, I realise that we have one or two cases where
the publication type makes this difficult to achieve - our loose-leaf titles
for example! But perhaps these don't count as 'books'?
Toby Green
Head of Dissemination and Marketing
OECD Publishing
Public Affairs and Communications Directorate
http://www.oecd.org/Bookshop
http://www.SourceOECD.org - our award-winning e-library
http://www.oecd.org/OECDdirect - our new title alerting service
+33 1 45 24 94 15 (phone)/ 53 (fax)
2 rue André Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex 16, France
Find out more about our new Factbook, a compilation of 100 statistical
indicators from across the OECD's work complete with downloadable Excel
spreadsheets: http://www.oecd.org/publications/factbook
-----Original Message-----
From: E-books in academic libraries mailing list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of J.W.T.Smith
Sent: 04 May, 2005 6:33 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: E-books and Editions
Is an e-book based on a specific p-edition the same edition?
My feeling is that it is not because although the 'content' may be identical
the functionality of the overall information object is different, and it is
this combined 'content plus functionality' that identifies the information
object.
I'm sure others have a different view and I would like to have your comments
:-) .
Regards,
John Smith,
The Templeman Library,
University of Kent.
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