Research into the impact of netLibrary, Questia and
Ebrary on electronic monograph publishing in the UK
The Department of Information and Library Studies of the
University of Wales, Aberystwyth is investigating the
impact that three new publishers of electronic monographs
will have on higher education and on electronic monograph
publishing in general. The project is funded by the
University of Wales, Aberystwyth Research Fund.
NetLibrary was launched in 1998 and offers access to tens
of thousands of e-books by way of libraries while the
other two services, Questia and Ebrary, are yet to launch
and will offer similar numbers of texts directly to
individuals. Will this inhibit conventional publishers
from making their books available electronically? Will UK
publishers join the schemes? Will libraries and
information services in the academic sector take
advantage of this form of publishing? Will academics and
students be accepting of, and use, monographs in this
form? Are sufficient books, from sufficient publishers,
covering sufficient disciplines being made available?
These are some of the questions that the research seeks
to answer.
This short project will investigate these issues with the
three companies and with some of the publishers with
which they are involved. It will also survey academic
librarians by way of a short e-mail questionnaire.
The research follows on from a previous JISC-funded
project undertaken by the team in which the publishing of
electronic scholarly monographs and textbooks was
undertaken and it is hoped that this 9-month project will
lead to a further funded piece of research in which the
issues can be examined in greater depth and user reaction
can be gauged. The report on the JISC research can be
found at
<http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/dlis/models/studies/elec-pub/elec
-pub.htm>.
A final report on this research will be published in an
academic journal. Further information can be obtained
from Ray Lonsdale ([log in to unmask]) or Chris Armstrong
([log in to unmask])
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