Hello, all!

 

I have spoken with an Over Drive rep (Claudia Weissman), a BWI Books rep (Jay Blint), and a NetLibrary rep (Jeff Hastings) this week. This email is to get the discussion going on what you guys want for your library. There are advantages and disadvantages to every product, but I think that NetLibrary might fit our situation best. Let’s talk about it!  What do you think?

 

Over Drive

 

Claudia has not emailed me a proposal yet, but she said that at the price she quoted me (about $130,000 for the first year, then about $62,000 each year after that for interface maintenance - $12,000 and collection development – $50,000), Over Drive would be best for a small consortium – like 20 libraries – excluding a library as big as Austin Public Library.

 

Breakdown of initial costs:

 

$28,000 one-time cost for installing the interface, staff training on the product, setting it up so that we can provide all types of formats for patrons if we choose to do so (we could buy e-books and e-movies from them, too, but to be honest, the e-movies are limited. Not to say that that’s not going to expand in the future.)

$1500 one-time cost per library system for integration into your automated library system. I wonder how this whole Follett thing will affect this fee. Will a library get charged another $1500 if it migrates during the life of the Over Drive contract?

$50,000 for collection development. The e-audio ranges from $2-$60 per copy. For example, the $2 ones are the radio programs from the 40’s, and I imagine the new bestseller titles or language classes are the more expensive titles. Claudia said that we would probably want to devote as much money each year to collection development, because patrons want the new titles and don’t want to wait for months to get them. This means we’d need to buy multiple copies of best sellers, which can limit the diversity of titles we select.

 

So:

 

The advantages:

you own the downloadable books.

we get to choose our own titles.

a good book selection.

if we got a grant at some point to facilitate this service to patrons, foundations like ownership models better than subscription models.

 

The disadvantages:

only one person can check out a “copy” of a book at a time. That means that for bestsellers, we would need to buy multiple copies of the same book, and even then, some (potentially many) patrons would have to wait in line – which adds the complexity of having a reserves or holds system in place (though the Over Drive software takes care of holds).

we have to choose our own titles! So we would need to create a committee that met regularly to determine what to purchase.

we can’t grow as easily with this product to ultimately include all CTLS libraries that are interested. And I think once we get up and running, other libraries will want to join.

the cost!!

Is not compatible with Ipod.

 

BWI Books

 

They’re not doing downloadable books anymore! They are now selling audiobooks on Playaways, which are fool-proof, pretty much unbreakable devices the size of a credit card, if I understand Jay correctly. These might be great replacements for audiobooks on CD and cassette. They also make sense for the segment of our population that would feel intimidated about downloading over the Internet. Here’s an article about the Playaways, if you’re interested:

 

http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2005/11/playaways_hit_the_market.html

 

I wonder if the Large Print collection that CTLS has could use some of these (we’d need to find a grant) and create a rotating collection.

 

NetLibrary

 

To let you all know, Waco and Harker Heights have already subscribed to NetLibrary. We can get the inside scoop from them.

 

The advantages:

A core collection of 1500 books, to which 30 books are added monthly.

NetLibrary will be making an agreement with Books-on-Tape and Blackstone within the next several months, so that’s going to grow the core collection by 500.

There’s no wait for patrons to download a particular title, so long as we haven’t maxed out our total allowable checkout at one time (see table below – 100,000 checkouts at one time for category 7, which I think would be us). We could decide on a maximum number of audiobooks that patrons can check out at one time. And we could add more checkout bundles for $250/ 500 checkouts, if we get to the point of needing more.

NetLibrary will supply us with the MARC records, so we then just add the MARC record to our catalog, which will provide a link to the title in NetLibrary’s database.

No limits to growth for CTLS library members.

There are two places to customize the NetLibrary interface once patrons have been authenticated through your library, so we could have your library’s name and CTLS (or Friends of CTLS if the Friends group makes more logistical sense)

The price.

 

 

I need to check the statistics, but I think we might fall into the 5 million plus circs a year as a system.

 

US - Public Library	Core Collection
	Circulation	List Price	Promotional Price	Allowable Checkouts
Category 1	Under 100,000	$3,000	$2,500	3,500
Category 2	100,000-499,999	$6,000	$5,000	7,500
Category 3	500,000-999,999	$12,000	$10,000	15,000
Category 4	1,000,000-2,299,999	$21,000	$18,000	25,000
Category 5	2,300,000-3,599,999	$30,000	$25,000	50,000
Category 6	3,600,000-4,999,999	$45,000	$40,000	75,000
Category 7	5,000,000 or more	$60,000	$50,000	100,000
Additional checkout bundles			$250	500
	Children's/Young Adult Collection
	Circulation	List Price	Promotional Price	Allowable Checkouts
Category 1	Under 100,000	$750	$600	800
Category 2	100,000-499,999	$1,500	$1,200	1,800
Category 3	500,000-999,999	$3,000	$2,400	3,750
Category 4	1,000,000-2,299,999	$5,500	$4,400	6,250
Category 5	2,300,000-3,599,999	$7,500	$6,000	12,500
Category 6	3,600,000-4,999,999	$11,250	$9,000	17,500
Category 7	5,000,000 or more	$15,000	$12,000	25,000
Additional checkout bundles			$250	500

 

 

The disadvantages:

 

A subscription service, so if we don’t renew, we won’t have anything to show for it. (Though, this is also an advantage, in that we don’t have to do any of the upgrading, and we aren’t stuck with software that ends up in the “Museum of Failed Technology” as my old collection development coordinator liked to say. We’re not over-invested in this product if it doesn’t suit our needs, unlike Over Drive.)

We will need to authenticate the patron’s identification. This means that we 1) set up a way to stop patrons on our catalog before they link to the NetLibrary catalog with a pop-up that asks for library card number and pin, or some variation of that, or 2) Patrons must come into the library first to establish a net library account (authentication by recognizing the IP addresses of the library’s computers), then they can access their account from home. I think this is the setup for TexShare NetLibrary ebook accounts. You guys might already have this configured. And to clarify, I asked TSLAC if they planned on adding downloadable audiobooks to their ebook Net Library account. They said no, no plans at all.

Not as diverse a group of publishers as Over Drive. Still, the problem with both of these vendors is that there’s not much overlap in titles. In many ways, though, I would rather be presented with a smaller group of audiobooks that I could download immediately than be offered a broader group of audiobooks that I may have to wait for someone to check the audiobook back in.

Is not compatible with Ipod. Should we also talk about renting out mp3 players to patrons? And Friends selling the headphones or Friends selling moderately-priced mp3 players ($30-40) to patrons?