1. A Locally Hosted Ebook
Platform in a Consortial
Environment
Tony Horava, University of Ottawa
(Canada)
Charleston Conference
Nov. 8, 2007

2. Outline
 Consortial overview
 Ebook collections
 Challenges
 Objectives
 Process
 Next steps
Tony Horava, Charleston Conference, Nov 8, 2007
2

3. Consortial overview
 Ontario Council of University Libraries (
OCUL)
 Composition
 Functioning
 Information Resources Committee
 Licensing of ebooks
 Scholars Portal description
Tony Horava, Charleston Conference, Nov 8, 2007
3

4. Ebook collections
 Existing OCUL agreements ; institutional agreements
 Scholars Portal ebooks working group
 Vendor template
 Model license
 Strategic considerations
 Funding obtained – 750K. Three year project plan
 Ebooks platform – functional requirements
Tony Horava, Charleston Conference, Nov 8, 2007
4

5. Challenges
 Patrons must use multiple systems to access
ebooks from a variety of sources
 Differences in cataloguing practices
 Differences in promotion/teaching activities
 No tool seen as adequate for federated
searching
 Managing a myriad of permissions and rights
 Lack of integration with Scholars Portal
Tony Horava, Charleston Conference, Nov 8, 2007
5

6. Objectives of ebook platform
 To provide a single retrieval & delivery platform
for collectively licensed & locally digitized ebooks
 To support locally archived content in perpetuity
 To be open, expandable, and integrated with other
Scholars Portal services
 To support access & delivery – not content selection
 To house about 50,000 scholarly ebooks and 50,000
out-of-copyright ebooks:
Tony Horava, Charleston Conference, Nov 8, 2007
6

7. Process
 April 2007 – RFI released
 Two candidates invited to give presentations:
MyiLibrary and ebrary
 Ideas & issues incorporated into RFP, eg workflow
scenarios for vendors & publishers’ ebooks
 RFP issued on Oct 3; closed on Oct 19
 Evaluation period: Oct 22-31
 Presentations: Oct 22-24
 Award notification: Nov. 30
Tony Horava, Charleston Conference, Nov 8, 2007
7

8. Requirements
 Support the loading/archiving/searching of
ebooks in a wide variety of formats
 Support access to a large & growing collection
 Support intellectual property rights (DRM)
and permissions information
 Support the inclusion of metadata describing
remotely housed collections
 Support a variety of operating systems and
platforms
Tony Horava, Charleston Conference, Nov 8, 2007
8

9. Requirements (2)
 Support all major browsers without plug-ins
 Support access for persons with disabilities
 Allow local branding
 Allow patrons to save their own settings
 Support incorporation of ebook data into local
systems (eg XML and MARC records)
 Support durable links, Open URL, and various
authentication schemes
Tony Horava, Charleston Conference, Nov 8, 2007
9

10. Next steps
 Determine implementation plan with winning
bidder
 Communications and timeframes
 Project deliverables
Tony Horava, Charleston Conference, Nov 8, 2007
10