NetLibrary Changes Consortia
E-book Purchase Program

By Rosario Garza
NetLibrary has announced a change to the consortial (or group) purchase program that BCR and other consortia have taken advantage of to lower the cost of electronic book purchases for our members. Although shared collections will continue to be possible, a new requirement will go into effect on January 1, 2006.

Beginning January 1, 2006, consortia must purchase multiple copies of each e-book title. The number of copies required, and thus the number of simultaneous-user accesses available to the group, will be based on the number of libraries participating in the shared offering. This requirement is being implemented in two phases:

• Shared collections purchased January 1, 2006, through June 30, 2006.
• Shared collections purchased between July 1, 2006, and June 30, 2009.

The program will be reevaluated in 2009. The following chart outlines the multiple-copy purchase requirements as of January 1, 2006.

What does this mean for the current BCR Ready Reference 2 Plus group purchase? Because we now need to have the purchase completed no later than December 31, 2005, BCR will close the collection to new participants as of December 27. Libraries that have not purchased into the BCR Ready Reference 2 Plus by the end of day December 27, will not be able to opt in at a later date. Libraries are encouraged to go to www.bcr.org/reference/Netlibrary/NL-MenuRR.html#netlibrary to learn more about this latest group purchase being offered by BCR.

Current individual libraries purchase unique collections on a one-title, one-simultaneous user basis. Libraries with their own unique (nonshared) collections will be extended two simultaneous accesses on every title they own from participating publishers at no additional charge to the library. The two simultaneous accesses will apply to both titles purchased in the past and titles purchased going forward that are provided to NetLibrary by participating publishers. Please note that for individual collections, libraries receive two simultaneous accesses to each title without being required to purchase two copies of each title. Individual libraries will continue to be able to purchase a single copy of each title, yet will receive two simultaneous accesses per title.

If you have questions about NetLibrary e-books, please contact Laura Chittivej (lchittiv@bcr.org) or Rosario Garza (rgarza@bcr.org) at BCR.

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February 27, 2008
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