2018 Charleston Library Conference

Most university presses deliver their ebooks to libraries through aggregators such as JSTOR, Project MUSE, EBSCO, and ProQuest. However, in 2019 two university presses, MIT Press and University of Michigan Press, will launch their own ebook offerings for direct sale to institutions and other presses are considering following suit. While Oxford, Cambridge, and Duke have offered their own ebook products for a number of years, and there are some important specialist collections (such as the Loeb Online Library from Harvard) in the marketplace, the intensity of discussion within the university press community about “going it alone” is new and deserves further interrogation. This session will explore why MIT and Michigan are taking the bold step of launching their own ebook products, what problems they are trying to solve by doing so, and the processes they have gone through to work out the licensing and business terms. Join us to discover new trends in the ebook landscape, give feedback on some emerging mission-driven products, and explore the continued evolution of the scholarly communication landscape.