In Hard Times, netLibrary & Adobe Look to Build Anew

By Steven Zeitchik and Jim Milliot, PW Newsline -- Publishers Weekly, 11/9/2001

What is it about Friday and technology rumors? Today's juice comes from several places. First, netLibrary, which our colleagues at Library Journal's Academic Newswire reports as having its assets frozen, may be getting closer to finding a buyer.

In the LJ story, netLibrary's Marge Gammon alluded to an unnamed buyer. Today, news came that Gammon might be referring to OCLC, the library computer-service and research organization. An OCLC official would not confirm or deny the report. Word at NIST earlier in the week also hinted at the possibility of EBSCO, the magazine archive and research service, as one of the possible candidates.

At NIST, netLibrary's booth sat empty and its problems were dissected by attendees. Having already signed up 300 publisher contracts and digitized more than 40,000 books, netLibrary could make an attractive buy for a major library player, such as the two aforementioned companies.

Meanwhile, some of the 150 people laid off from Adobe earlier this month apparently came from the e-book division, though we were unable to reach anyone at press time to confirm this report. At a financial conference in late October, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen said that "we think e-books is going to be a growth category, but it's going to happen much later than we anticipated." The firm known for Acrobat and other software applications had a soft third quarter and expects fourth quarter revenues to be lower than previously forecast.