Resouce of the Week -- A Freebie for Info Pros from ebrary
Resouce of the Week -- A Freebie for Info Pros from ebrary
By Gary Price, Founder and Senior Editor
One of the most impressive “freebies” on the Internet comes from ebrary. We've mentioned it before. It's officially called ebrary Discover.
Users (you don't need to have a subscription) can search and read more than 20,000 full text books online (recent titles) in a wide array of disciplines from a variety of publishers. The financial aspect only comes in to play if you want to print or save a page.
When you register for the service (it takes only a few seconds and, again, it's free), you have to place a minimum of $5 on a credit card. The money is ONLY used if you decide to print or copy a page. Each page costs a quarter to print or save. A unique payment plan for sure.
We see all of this as a win-win.
Users gain access to over 20K titles and the chance to sample some ebrary technology. ebrary gets users to learn about the company and try its technology in a practical and useful manner. It would be great if all demos could be like this.
So, why are we writing about it today?
Because it's not the only freebie ebrary offers.
In addition to the 20,000 books from ebrary Discover, the company provides another collection of free e-books and this collection is aimed squarely and info pros.
The ebrary Library and KM Center is home to over 140 full text searchable (and free) e-books and other "authoritative materials."
Sample titles run from Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages to Practical Guide to Knowledge Management and include such items as Development of Digital Libraries : An American Perspective to Closing an Era : Historical Perspectives on Modern Archives & Records Management.
Users can conduct a:
Simple Search
Fielded Search (under the search tab)
Also, on results pages, users can:
review a book's table of contents
find similar books in the collection
add the book to your bookshelf (for which you'll need to register but, as with ebrary Discover, it's free.
A number of other ebrary features are available, suc as ranking results by the entire book or by chapter. Do some exploration on your own. Being able to explore on your own is what makes a demo like this so powerful.
And, from what we can tell, printing pages from the Library and KM feature is free.
As we said earlier, it would be great if other info providers offered permanent, practical, free, and useful resources like ebrary does. We hope this is the beginning of a trend. What a great way to get users to notice your product -- by giving them something "real world" for which they can use it.
So, as we've said many times when discussing ebrary, kudos!
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