Duke University Press has developed a new pilot electronic book product for trial during 2008. The e-Duke Scholarly Books Collection will provide perpetual online access to at least 100 new scholarly books published by Duke University Press in the humanities and social sciences in a calendar year.
With the purchase of the current year's titles in the e-Duke Scholarly Books Collection, libraries will also receive access to all of the Press's backlist books now available in electronic form.
The e-Duke Scholarly Books Collection will be hosted on the ebrary platform, from which an unlimited number of simultaneous users at a subscribing institution will be able to access content.
The content will be full-text searchable, along with any other titles to which the institution has access via ebrary. Additionally, Duke University Press has partnered with Duke University's Perkins Library to provide full MARC cataloging, including chapter-level metadata.
"The last several years have seen substantial changes in the terrain of scholarly publishing," said Duke University Press director Steve Cohn. "The shift to online publishing has dramatically changed the way in which scholars perform research and engage with the material we publish, while also substantially reconfiguring the way in which libraries make their purchasing decisions and allocate resources.
"Given today's climate, it was a natural decision to move forward with the creation of an electronic book collection. But just how to do that in practice has required a great deal of thinking and talking, both internally and with librarians and vendors."
The business model of the e-Duke Scholarly Books Collection builds on that of the e-Duke Scholarly Journals Collection, which evolved with much collaboration and feedback from the library community. The e-Duke Scholarly Books Collection will feature a similar library-friendly tiered pricing structure based on Carnegie classifications and a very affordable print add-on option that libraries will find attractive.
Undertaken with the guidance of Project Consultant and online content and library market specialist October Ivins, the pilot project (launching in January 2008) has been extended to a select group of partner libraries. The goal of the project is to refine the product according to actual practice, so that it fully meets library needs when it is made available to the larger institutional community in 2009. Thus Duke University Press will be soliciting feedback from the pilot participants regarding issues such as access, pricing, the site license, and vendor preferences.
For more information about the e-Duke Scholarly Books Collection pilot project, click here.