Despite the nuclear winter of the dot-com debacle and other problems plaguing the development of electronic publishing, the recently concluded American Library Association annual meeting provided evidence that the next phase of digital publishing is pushing up through the snow for publishers, librarians and technology companies.

"Last year people were coming up to me and asking, 'What's an e-book?' " observed Marge Gammon, netLibrary's senior director, marketing. "This year, it's: 'What's hot in content? Any new features? How do I authenticate patrons?' " The steady progress of e-book companies as diverse as ABC-CLIO, netLibrary and McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing provide a reality-based antidote to disappointments created by last year's overheated estimates from consultants. "You could say that the category has reached validity," Gammon added. "Some 5,300 libraries are accessing our e-books online, and 90% of our customers are adding to their collection."

The most interesting technology to come out at ALA may be "smart" Internet addresses, or OpenURLs. According to a presentation by California Institute of Technology specialist Eric Van de Velde, "An OpenURL provides a range of new information for the user." Through processes that are a bit complex, this technology leverages the fact that an increasing number of users of the Web are part of a more sophisticated architecture of online information and services due to their status as student, researcher, customer or corporate employee. Unlike the familiar Internet address, an OpenURL (you'll know it by the "?" embedded in the middle) can recognize users and bring them to the most appropriate of several options, e.g., a copy of an article to which they already have subscription rights, as opposed to the same article on a server where they have no rights. One can imagine a service where established customers click on an OpenURL and are brought to the full text of a book and the book review, as well as a book-buying service. "The hype is over," Van de Velde declared. "Serious people can now start working to create a quality Web as distinct from the junk Web created by the current passive, hard-coded URLs." (For information: http://library.caltech.edu/OpenURL.)

Reading the Tea Leaves

Among signs of marketplace evolution evident at ALA were second-generation products, consolidation among surviving players and a commitment to marketing, as opposed to unrealistic short-term sales goals that doomed many startups. Typical examples include the following.

Swets Blackwell has unveiled a Web-based journal subscription and information management system. "The system was co-developed by a group from IBM that understands technology and by Swets Blackwell people who, of course, know our business," CEO Philipp Neie explained. "By using this software, members of an organization can individually and autonomously sign up for or cancel subscriptions online but are still governed by whatever level of control a company might institute."

Bob Stankard, director and general manager for Canon's Image Filing Systems Group, said that libraries represent a "major" market segment for the company. Featured was its new DR 5060 scanner, which simultaneously creates a digital file and a microfilm copy for archival purposes from a paper original.

The National Medical Library is testing a product to make online reading more "real" through touch-screen page turning.

At a different end of the spectrum, the not-for-profit tutor.com provides libraries a service through which students are connected with some 35,000 online tutors as needed.

The content procurement company Rowe.com, which had previously acquired Faxon, was testing its wings as part of Divine, a merger that occurred in May via a $19 million stock swap.

Not every technology flower is blooming. Questia, the well-publicized and capitalized startup offering students an online library, is reportedly sputtering in its efforts to sign up student users. As one industry observer noted, "If any library can also offer books online, why Questia?" And Internet 2, the high-speed Internet piloted with much fanfare in academia, appears to be not much further along in targeting applications for publishing than when discussions first took place in Washington, D.C., in the late 1990s.

Along with consolidation, there are winds of cooperation, including a pending agreement between Baker & Taylor and netLibrary, which was in the final phase of discussions during ALA. Under the terms of the agreement, B&T will distribute netLibrary's books domestically. Once again, realistic expectations are key to success. "Last year, the publishing industry got out in front of the marketplace," B&T's Pam Harris suggested. "Today, the fear that books will be the vinyl records of content is simply gone."