New Strategies for OCLC; More Content for EBSCO Publishing by Barbara Quint, Newsbreaks (Mar 25)
Does anyone write a better opening paragraph than Barbara Quint? Here's an update on OCLC and EBSCO in 4 sentences.
"In a major change of direction, OCLC (www.oclc.org), a leading vendor of services to and by libraries, has decided to shut down its hosting and reselling of commercially produced vendor databases, including ebooks. Instead, it will apply its energies and resources to ramping up its discovery service through its WorldCat Local and WorldCat.org operations and building its web-scale library management services, using a cloud computing approach to compete with integrated library service (ILS) providers. Taking advantage of the change, EBSCO Publishing (www.ebscohost.com) will take over many of the databases currently supplied through OCLC's FirstSearch service, begun in 1991. It has also acquired the NetLibrary division (www.netlibrary.com) of OCLC and its collection of some 200,000 ebooks. H.W. Wilson Co. (www.hwwilson.com) has already responded to the changed policy by working to move OCLC subscribers to WilsonWeb."
Posted by Gwen at March 25, 2010 04:22 PM