When I recently posted a summary of Jane Burke's posts on the InfoViews blog, I hadn't realized InfoViews was owned by a ProQuest employee. Mike does point out that the views posted are his, and not those of ProQuest, but it's something to be aware of, and explains why he's collecting so many guest posts from ProQuest employees! 🙂
Which brings us to the latest post, How Individual Book Buying Experiences are Reshaping Academic Library User Expectations for Ebooks, written by Leslie Lees, Vice President of Content Development at ebrary (recently acquired by ProQuest). She points out how Amazon and iTunes have influenced the way the general public expects to purchase information generally, and possibly non-fiction books as well:
As compared to journals and other forms of academic literature, books are purchased much more widely by individuals for personal use. If academic monographs in libraries had continued to be the only game in town, libraries would have retained more of their influence, but the explosion in the purchase of books for individual use has had a major impact on user expectations.
She also references a fascinating-sounding book (not available on ebrary) which I now have on hold at my library: Blair, Ann. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale UP, 2010. Print.
Rumour time! I see that Mike posted an interview with Slavin Zivkovic, CEO of Springshare, makers of the wonderful LibGuides product. I wonder if ProQuest is going to acquire Springshare? 🙂
Comments
2 Responses to “How Individual Book Buying Experiences are Reshaping Academic Library User Expectations for Ebooks”
Good lord, I sure hope Springshare doesn’t get acquired! That would be the end of the company’s amazing customer service and their nimble development of new services.
Hello Paul,
Sorry to be the rumor squasher, but I am not interested in acquisitions – I would only consider merger of equals, with Springshare retaining control of the merged entity. So, if anybody’s interested – you know how to find me. 🙂
Joking aside, we are working with ProQuest on several exciting product tie-ups which will benefit our clients and that’s when I had the opportunity to chat with Mike about library things in general. A couple of these ProQuest-Springshare product partnerships will be announced at the ALA in New Orleans.
While the bright folks at ProQuest had the foresight to approach us and work with us before any other vendor noticed our speedy rise in the library world, the relationship is by no means exclusive and we would love, *love* to work with every other library vendor out there, and make their stuff easily accessible from Springshare tools (LibGuides, LibAnswers, etc.) and vice versa.
Hence, to those companies who are not interested in a merger of equals ;), please contact us so that we can work together on exciting product partnerships and tie-ups, just like we’re doing with ProQuest!
Thanks much,
-Slaven Zivkovic
Chief Springy
http://springshare.com