I attended an OCLC presentation at the PLA Conference, with Michael Gorrell (mdg@ebscohost.com) CIO of EBSCO Publishing- remember, EBSCO and OCLC recently announced a deal to sell its NetLibrary divisioin and EBSCO will be taking it over incrementally over the next several months. I wonder what the presentation as it was originally envisioned was like!
Mike Gorrell first talked about the new acquisition:
this will allow the incorporation of ebooks into the EBSCO platform and further enhance the development of EBSCO's Content/PDF viewer. Since Mike admits that "EBSCO doesn't know books" they will be soliciting a lot of input from librarians on how to go forward.
The new PDF viewer will be added to the EBSCO platform next week- the content viewer will enhance access to journals by providing more content in the .pdf platform, which allows better access to images and illustrations, with image handling, zooming, and mapping abilites. It will also be possible to switch between the html and pdf versions of the documents. EBSCO are interested in exploring connecting the NetLibrary content with its NoveList platform, and with further leveraging its content to mobile devices and e-readers. Other than purchasing an adobe license, there's not really any technology hurdle for the library. It's then possible for users to download a pdf-type version of a book to their PC, or, in many cases, a device.
An alternative download manager will be released soon- a "light" version of the Media Center, which is a big install that some low-bandwidth users have trouble with. The new version will have fewer features and a different architecture.
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