NetLibrary reaches 200,000 ebook and audio titles
By Paul Biba
Founded in 1967, OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing the rate of rise of library costs. More than 71,000 libraries in 112 countries and territories around the world use OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials. From their press release:
NetLibrary has achieved a ground-breaking milestone by being the first eContent platform to offer academic, public, special and school library users access to more than 200,000 eBook and eAudiobook titles.
“Reaching the 200,000-title mark shows OCLC’s continued commitment to electronic content and is a testament to the depth of our collections,” said Suzanne Kemperman, OCLC Director of Publisher Relations. NetLibrary now offers more than 190,000 eBooks and 12,000 eAudiobooks from more than 400 publishers worldwide.
The 200,000th title loaded to the NetLibrary catalog was Schaum’s Outline of Mathematica by Eugene Don (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2009). Schaum’s Outlines provide students with the information they need to know to succeed in college courses—without being overwhelmed by unnecessary details.
Thanks to ResourceShelf for the link.
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:18 pm
I’ve been impressed with how quickly OCLC is improving. They really do get the Internet. As a resource, they’re amazing. They even know to link my Lord of the Rings chronology, Untangling Tolkien, to its Polish translation. I only wish they’d be like the Library of Congress and let authors/publishers get an OCLC number in advance. Sometimes one edition ends to two or more entries in their database. That can get very confusing.
Linking to where readers can get an ebook like you describe is a big step forward, as are the ‘buy it” links. But linking only to Amazon, B&N and Better World Books is a bit skimpy. They need to include The Book Depository, which ships free to some 70 countries, as well as any online store preferred by the author/publisher. For my Chesterton books, I’d rather refer people to the American Chesterton Society, where the money does more good than when it goes to Amazon.
For in-print books, it’d also be great if they let the author upload a PDF or ePub sampler. I do my best by entering excerpts and the contents from my book into their database, but more than that is needed.
I suspect that in the next decade we’ll go from too few online book resources to an embarrassment of riches. I can remember a time only a few years back when the only way to get access to OCLC from home was to go to a certain large used bookstore’s website, enter a bogus title, and when the ‘not available’ page appeared, use the OCLC search engine they so kindly offered.