All Your NetLibrary Are Belong to EBSCO
Evidently neither OCLC nor EBSCO have any problems with secrets leaking out from their companies, because this comes as a huge shock (and us just getting our big statewide NetLibrary thing going)! Basically it looks as though OCLC is moving away from owning/reselling content, and instead focusing more on providing access to other people’s content (a good move, I think).
Library Journal has a good paragraph regarding OCLC’s position in this:
“It’s a strategic repositioning from hosting and reselling content to building WorldCat out as a platform that libraries can use to manage and provide access to their entire collection,” including ebooks and articles, said OCLC VP Chip Nilges in an interview with LJ. It’s also “part of a broader effort to “provide comprehensive coverage” of ebooks in WorldCat,” said Nilges. “We have an agreement with Google Book Search to link to books in WorldCat; we have a similar agreement with Hathi Trust. We’re in hot pursuit of many different providers.”
EBSCO, meanwhile, has furthered their attempt at domination of the content market, also buying 15 vendor-owned databases that were once a part of FirstSearch.
Lots more info via the press release on PRWeb.
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