As was clear from the various e-book meetings this fall, publishers are struggling to define basic business strategy in the digital space. And as was apparent from the recent ALA Midwinter meeting, online content and e-books are business as usual for libraries. In fact, libraries and technology vendors are working at a higher level of sophistication than most print publishers in terms of integrating content assets, digital technologies and end-user needs into a coherent business model.
Offerings such as SIRSI's iBistro provide turnkey "Internet access centers" for any library. Branded as the library itself, this center gives the institution an immediate and significant Web presence, integrating both the e- and p- assets of the library for online patrons, including copies of e-books from netLibrary and other vendors, as well as a mushrooming number of resources taken from the Internet itself.
A well-established provider of library technology, Exlibris has released a new product: Content-Sensitive Reference Linking, or SFX. While publishers are proud of Crossref, a technology that uses the DOI to hot-link citations to the original articles, SFX claims to make this capability more useful. In fact, not just the DOI, but standard identifiers like the ISBN, ISSN and SICI can be fully integrated into electronic archives and catalogues using the SFX tool, significantly expanding their usefulness to librarians and patrons.
Some publishers are already tracking with these developments. In Washington, D.C., to announce the launch of the next generation of electronic offerings from Elsevier's ScienceDirect, John Regazzi, president and CEO of Elsevier Science Inc., spoke with PW about a spectrum of issues. Throughout his discussion, however, was his admiration for libraries' technology and customer savvy. "They have always been on the cutting edge," he asserted. Here again, where book publishers are grappling with issues of whether e- and p- versions of the same content should be separate products or linked, and how to price them, Elsevier is taking its clue from the needs of the libraries.
"With their budgets under attack, libraries face a Sophie's Choice as to whether to buy print or e-products," Regazzi observed. "Is there a single best path for them to create online services for their clients?" he asked. From being the focus of librarians' anger just a couple of years ago (due to sustained journal price increases), Elsevier is now working to reposition itself as a value-oriented vendor, offering value-priced e-versions and other online services linked to Elsevier's print products. Trade book publishers are having more difficulty offering a similar value proposition to customers, in that they are under intense pressure from large retailers who are "enraged" at the idea that e-book pricing might "undercut" p-book prices.
"If I could say two things to publishers," Regazzi noted, "it would be these: 1) Focus on creating a broad range of common standards, so that we can all build services off of them; and 2) put librarians on your design committees, because they really know what online customers want."
Individual librarians themselves have very specific suggestions to help publishers move up the digital business model curve. "Internal operations in print publishing are either underdeveloped or not sufficiently standardized," noted Eileen Palmer of the Library Network in Southgate, Mich. She went on to describe the collaboration over the last seven years among institutions of higher education, librarians and the 50 telecommunications companies in Michigan, resulting in a rich network of high-speed T1 lines for library users throughout the state. "There is a significant lack of collaboration within the book publishing world, making it harder for us to join with them to provide our customers with more services," Palmer noted.
"Why do I have to go through Amazon or Baker & Taylor for their products?" wondered Tony Wening, program director at the Missouri Research and Educational Network. "Why don't publishers sell to me directly?" The reason, he speculated, is that "Publishers are trying to re-create e-versions of the p-world. The problem is, they don't scale. It won't work. What you need is a whole new model."
A new model is exactly what Stephen Rhind-Tutt, the head of Alexander Street Press (www.alexanderstreetpress.com), is implementing in the company's purely electronic approach to publishing. Rhind-Tutt echoed a comment heard during last fall's e-conferences: increasingly, the context rather than the specific content is what customers want. Things like "tagging, encoding, controlled language [i.e., precise metadata] are at the heart of successful e-publishing. Content itself, is no longer king. I wish it were," he said. Noting the different market valuations of a content company like Lexis-Nexis (low) versus a search tool like Alta Vista (high), Rhind-Tutt proposed, "Today the central issue is not what the specific content is, but how you find it."
Alexander Street Press's first product, for example, North American Women's Letters and Diaries, Colonial to 1950, "Would make a lousy print product," Rhind-Tutt asserted. "It would be hard to use and have almost no commercial value. Just volumes and volumes. But when it's published electronically, you can enter, say, a search for 'gold rush' in the writings of women ages 16 to 45, in the year 1849, and in a flash you open up an amazing window of American history."
The disconnect between some publishers and librarians may be an unintended consequence of the Clinton administration's attempt to broker copyright consensus in the mid-1990s. Those librarians who adamantly espoused the controversial notion that "information wants to be free" may have alienated some publishers. And as a recent Washington Post article on AAP's president, Pat Schroeder, shows, this disconnect between the two communities continues. Nonetheless, publishers, like McGraw-Hill or Elsevier Science, whose core businesses keep them focused on libraries, have reaped great benefits, especially thinking about the nature of e-publishing and how technology can be integrated to serve the needs of the ultimate customer.
