North Carolina: NC LIVE Announces Homegrown Ebook Program Will Continue as Regular Service

News of the Homegrown Ebook Program Collection becoming a regular service along with a summary of the program to this point (the pilot phase has concluded) were shared yesterday in a memo by NC LIVE’s Assistant Director, Jill Morris.
NC Live is North Carolina’s statewide online library service
The complete memo (1337 words) is posted on the NC LIVE blog.
We think the memo/post will be of interest not only to those in North Carolina but to other libraries, consortia, etc. considering or developing similar services.
Here are a few highlights from the memo:

NC LIVE is happy to announce that having now completed the pilot phase of the Home Grown ebook project, including purchasing the books, launching the platform, gathering feedback and assessing the results, the Home Grown ebook collection has now become a regular NC LIVE service that will continue to be offered to North Carolina libraries.
…in August 2014, the Home Grown eBooks Collection on the BiblioBoard platform officially launched, giving patrons of all North Carolina libraries unlimited simultaneous access to 1,221 ebooks secured from eight participating publishers.
NC LIVE also tested a new ebook group funding model by asking each member library to pledge at least $250 to help fund the purchase of this ebook collection. In return, NC LIVE promised to contribute by providing access to the BiblioBoard platform on behalf of all member libraries.
The development of local publisher relationships was by far one of the biggest challenges and successes enjoyed within this project. NC LIVE, libraries, and publishers all found positive outcomes in exposing library patrons to new titles, and bringing new ebooks to the library marketplace. Controlling negotiations locally rather than relying on a major vendor or aggregator was time consuming for consortium staff, but rewarding as it made it possible to work with small publishers that many major aggregators would never work with for a variety of reasons.
Judging by usage statistics alone, NC LIVE staff believed the pilot project was a success. Without heavy promotion and integration of the content into library catalogs, the collection saw usage spread across all publishers, as well as across all library types and sizes.
…NC LIVE will continue to consider other licensing options and other forms of collaboration that may result in inter-consortial partnerships as ebook projects continue to pop-up among library consortia nationwide. The New York Public Library, among others is working on grant-funding for projects that would bring together the work NC LIVE has done with the work of other consortia for shared benefits.

For More, Read the Complete Blog Post (1337 Words)

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