ebrary Strengthens Strategic E-book Acquisition Program for Community and Career Colleges

PALO ALTO, Cailf., July 30, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- To help community and career colleges acquire e-books more strategically, ebrary®, a ProQuest business, has added thousands of relevant e-books across acquisition models, which provide libraries with the highest return on investment when combined. Diversifying acquisition models is a key component of ebrary's three-step approach: Transition, Diversify, Streamline™.

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ebrary's College Complete™ collection, an affordable subscription database, has been updated with over 1,000 new e-books from renowned publishers such as John Wiley & Sons, Packt Publishing, and Emerald Group Publishing Limited. The database now includes a growing selection of more than 26,800 titles with unlimited, multi-user access for both on-campus and distance learning in subjects like business, computer science, and health. Many community and career colleges also subscribe to ebrary's Academic Complete™ collection, the industry's first and most scholarly subscription database, to provide comprehensive coverage in all academic subject areas.

Moreover, ebrary has added over 9,000 new titles from publishers like SAGE Publications, IGI Global, and National Children's Bureau, that can be purchased outright or through its patron driven acquisition program where titles are only purchased if they are used.

To make it easier for those schools supporting vocational students in veterinary training to purchase critical titles, ebrary's on-staff librarians have created two new packs – one core and one specialized – in veterinary technology. ebrary's new Veterinary Technology I pack covers domestic animals and includes handbooks, textbooks, atlases, and manuals in animal health technology, animal behavior, pet medicine, and veterinary nursing from distinguished publishers in these fields.

The Veterinary Technology II pack, a specialized package with an emphasis on large animals, features e-books from publishers such as Mosby, Saunders, and Butterworth-Heinemann. The pack covers livestock topics including horses, sheep, cattle and animal health, as well as internal medicine and drugs for large animals.  These packs are part of a series over the course of this year designed for the vocational technical market – one of the biggest growth areas in community and career college libraries.

"ebrary customers have already seen a great return on their investment and added value for their end-users by diversifying acquisition models: over 45% of our customers have adopted this strategic approach," said Leslie Lees, ebrary's Vice President of Content Development.  "We are aware that community and career college libraries are under pressure with their budgets. Our aim with this new strategic approach is to help with that issue by providing the most flexible acquisition models available alongside vast numbers of quality e-books for librarians to put in front of their students."

Key features and benefits of the ebrary platform include the following:

• Dedicated apps for the iPad®, iPhone®, iPod touch® and Android™
• DASH!™ (Data Sharing, Fast) for uploading and integrating a library's own digital content from local computers.  DASH! is available to College Complete and Academic Complete subscribers.
• InfoTools™, which turns words into portals to additional knowledge online
• COUNTER-compliant usage statistics
• Multiple search and navigation options
• Chapter ranking of search results
• Personal bookshelves 
• Highlighting and annotating
• Text-to-hyperlinks
• Text-to-speech
• Automatic citations
• Interface in multiple languages

About ebrary (www.ebrary.com)

ebrary helps customers acquire e-books strategically through a three step approach: Transition, Diversify and Streamline™.  The company believes that by challenging the e-book status quo, organizations can effectively serve the diverse and growing needs of researchers and maximize their budgets. Founded in 1999, long before e-books were popular, ebrary is a ProQuest business located in Palo Alto, CA, USA.

SOURCE ebrary