Monday, June 9, 2014

Introduction and Califa/CCCL's Enki

The idea for starting this blog came to me when leaving a voicemail for Tim Rogers at NC Live.  We had talked extensively when Califa was first launching our ebook project, Enki, and he had been working on something similar.  While in a meeting with Workman at BEA a few weeks ago, they mentioned a pilot of a project they were doing with NC Live, and I wanted to know more about it, and in general, I wanted to know more about his project.

It occured to me that there are many groups, states, consortia and libraries experimenting with their own ebook projects right now, and I have a hard time keeping up with them all (despite having just shared a BEA booth with four of them!).

And if I have a hard time keeping track of them, I know others do too.

So I'm collecting the stories and updates from all the different library ebook projects (or at least the ones I can get to send me information!) and will keep it updated as I am able here.


Let me start with the one I know best, our own Enki Library.  Named after a Sumerian deity of mischief, intelligence, and creativity, Enki is a consortium owned platform with consortium owned content.  We currently work with over 120 publishers (listed on our site as well as lots more information and further reading) to purchase content for a shared collection (used by 35 libraries currently).  The collection has about 20,000 items right now, and we're very proud of the depth and breadth in the collection.  There is some great stuff there.  We are building the capability for each library to have their own collection on their own site as well, and piggy back off of our agreements.

Enki launched in May 2013 with Contra Costa County (our tech partners in building Enki) and San Francisco Public.  CCCL is currently getting nearly 1500 circs/month, and other large libraries aren't far behind.   We're thrilled with the support we've received from the State Library to build the collection.

It occurs to me that there are some basic questions that should be answered for each project that I want to report on/keep updated with/

1.  Is this an owned-content model?  Califa's is.
2.  Is the platform/hosting owned, or are you using a vendor?  Califa owns our platform, and it was developed using VuFind+, an open source discovery layer.
3.  If you're using a vendor, who is it?  NA for us.
4.  Do you negotiate directly with publishers?  Yes for us.
5.  Do you have a shared collection?  Yes for us.
6.  When did you go live?  May 2013 for Califa.

Anything else I should be asking??

Thanks for reading.  I'm going to send a note out to the other major projects I know about, and see if I can't get some more participation and information on the blog.

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