YBP Library Services Teams with Orbis Cascade Alliance and EBL

SAN DIEGO, Jan. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- YBP Library Services, a Baker & Taylor company, Orbis Cascade Alliance, a 36-member consortium of academic libraries in Oregon and Washington, and Ebook Library (EBL) are proud to announce a partnership at the ALA Midwinter Meeting. Through this partnership, the trio will implement a consortial e-book evaluation and purchasing model that is fully integrated with Alliance members' approval and firm order purchases from YBP and offers the flexibility of EBL's proven On Demand acquisition platform.

"Since being named the preferred vendor for the Orbis Cascade Alliance in 2007, YBP Library Services has been proud to work with this dynamic group of libraries. This new consortia e-book purchasing project is testament to the continued innovation demonstrated by the Alliance," said Mark Kendall, Senior Vice President of Sales for YBP.

The new service, scheduled to begin as a pilot this spring, will allow access across the Alliance to e-books selected by individual library patrons. YBP's industry-leading approval process will be used to profile the dynamic lists of titles available and GOBI will provide comprehensive duplication control, for print and electronic titles, across all participating Alliance libraries. The Alliance will use EBL's On Demand platform tools to build a customized user experience and automated acquisition workflow.

According to John F. Helmer, Executive Director of Orbis Cascade, "The Alliance and our member libraries are very enthusiastic about this innovative pilot project. YBP and EBL have been outstanding partners in helping to plan this pilot project. Together we have created a comprehensive and flexible approach to reviewing, selecting and acquiring e-books that will benefit all Alliance member libraries."  

"EBL was thrilled to be selected as a partner in this project. The Orbis Cascade Alliance's vision for building a truly collaborative demand-driven e-book program is unprecedented and exciting.  We think the pairing of our expertise and technology with those of YBP will provide the Alliance with a very successful solution and one that many consortia will find compelling," said Robin Champieux, Vice President of Business Development at EBL.

About YBP Library Services

YBP Library Services, a Baker & Taylor company, provides books and supporting collection management and technical services to academic, research and special libraries in the Americas, Asia, Middle East, Australia and the Pacific Rim. GOBI3, YBP Library Services' online, interactive bibliographic information service, provides access to 4 million titles in an English language database. YBP Library Services headquarters are in Contoocook, N.H., USA. For more on the company, go to www.ybp.com.

About EBL (www.eblib.com)

EBL is a division of Ebooks Corporation Limited, an Australian public company with additional distribution channels that include ebooks.com (www.ebooks.com), the leading dedicated ebook retail site, and Ebook Services for publishers (http://www.ebookscorp.com/publishers.html). EBL's multi-user and demand-driven access models have been widely adopted by libraries around the world. EBL's ever expanding catalogue currently offers over 150,000 titles from over more than 400 international publishers in a vast range of academic and professional subject areas.

About the Orbis Cascade Alliance

The Orbis Cascade Alliance is a consortium of 36 academic libraries in Oregon and Washington.  Alliance member libraries work together to provide outstanding services to students and faculty, share information resources and expertise, develop library staff, and help members allocate financial and human resources to serve the unique needs of each member.  To this end, the Alliance considers the combined collections of member institutions as one collection.  The Alliance supports a number of services that support this vision, including Summit, a system that allows students, faculty and staff to easily search and request library materials owned by member libraries; courier service offering delivery of library materials in Oregon, Washington and Idaho; the Northwest Digital Archives,  cooperative purchasing for databases, ebooks and ejournals, and other digital library services. For more information: www.orbiscascade.org.

SOURCE Baker & Taylor