E-book University

Universities may be the most likely footholds for the growth of new digital reading practices, as a just-released survey conducted by the digital content management company Ebrary in Palo Alto, Calif., suggests, and as two recently announced agreements between university presses and digital solutions companies confirm.

Princeton University Press picked a digital content management company at the end of June: Ingram Digital. Princeton will start out with around 500 frontlist and backlist titles, adding 100 more in the next few years. Working with Ingram Digital will give Princeton access to Ingram's Web-based Search and Discover software, the company's's version of digital book browsing, which includes widgets and other viral marketing tools, as well as the potential for POD printing through Lightning Source. Ingram is excited about selling its services to the university press and academic market, according to Tyler Ruse, v-p and general manager of content solutions for Ingram, which also handles digital content for Yale University Press. “I think that particular environment is ideal for the adoption of digital content,” said Ruse, who also pointed out that university presses are the core market for Lightning Source, and that Ingram's Vital Source business is specifically focused on digital textbooks.

As reported in PW Daily (June 26), Chicago Distribution Center (CDC), the distribution arm of the University of Chicago Press, signed with the Providence, R.I.-based digital content manager and packager Tizra to enable CDC clients to sell their books digitally. Tizra's flagship product is called the Agile PDF—publishers essentially send Tizra their books as .PDF files, and Tizra breaks them into fully tagged, searchable online books hosted by Tizra's servers, accessed through custom-designed, branded Web sites for each publisher. While the University of Chicago Press is the first, and only, CDC-distributed publisher signed on so far, other CDC publishers include University of Iowa Press and Stanford University Press, among other top university and academic publishers, so there's some exciting potential here, and CDC says other publishers will be in the program this summer.

But who's going to read all these digital books? As it turns out, many students already are, at least according to the 2008 Global Student E-Book Survey, conducted by Ebrary, one of the leading suppliers of digital books and other content to libraries. Ebrary polled 6,500 students in roughly 400 institutions worldwide. The survey shows students and researchers already trust and use e-books and other digital and online reference materials for research and assignments, because they're easy to search, share and access, at least from within libraries. While the survey points out that print books are still the most trusted information sources, e-books are gaining traction fast in academic settings.