Baker & Taylor -- OCLC NetLibrary Announce Expanded Alliance

Baker & Taylor and OCLC Net Library announce expanded alliance. Baker & Taylor, the leading distributor of books, AV, and library services, and OCLC NetLibrary, the leading provider of eContent services to the institutional library market, announced an agreement to combine their strengths to facilitate delivery of a broader range of eContent to the library market. EBooks are full-text electronic versions of published books that library patrons can search, borrow, read, and return via the Internet. With NetLibrary eBooks, patrons can access library resources anywhere, while performing full-text searches across thousands of titles, and viewing books from their Internet browser. "This partnership is the perfect union of each company's strengths to best deliver eBooks to our customers," said George Coe, President Institutional Markets at Baker & Taylor. "To our customers, this collaboration will be virtually seamless. In the next few weeks, over 80,000 NetLibrary eBook titles will be available through Baker & Taylor, and B&T will incorporate these electronic materials into current collection development programs and approval plans." The processes already in place from an earlier working partnership will enable the two companies to launch this new alliance with minimal transitional requirements