The Beginning: NetLibrary

The University of Hong Kong Libraries’ e-book collection began in February 2000 when we acquired our first batch of some 500 NetLibrary e-books. NetLibrary was a pioneer in offering books from a large number of different publishers all on the same electronic platform. Signing up with NetLibrary was the HKU Libraries’ first step towards providing users with 24×7 access to all kinds of materials — they could now conveniently get online and read books in addition to using article databases, indexes and e-journals.

HKU Libraries’ NetLibrary search screen (click to enlarge)

The e-book collection quickly grew to over 2,000 publications, which were carefully selected by the HKU’s subject bibliographers and branch librarians. The publications covered all disciplines, including the sciences, medicine, economics and business, education, language and literature, and the arts and humanities.

A page from one of the first e-books bought by the HKU Libraries from NetLibrary: Joseph Parker’s book Zen Buddhist Landscape Arts of Early Muromachi Japan (1336-1573). The pictures look great! (click to enlarge)

In early 2002, after a period of observation and review, the library went into full gear to build up its e-book collection when Dr Anthony Ferguson, HKU’s Librarian, led the library to join with Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College and Middlebury College in the US to form the CCDM-HK NetLibary e-book consortium. The model to be adopted was Patron Driven Access, which means users determine what is purchased by clicking on and going into the e-books that they want to read. Much work went into deciding which publishers to include from NetLibrary’s long list of publishers, and technical details about how users access and use the e-books had to be worked out. Then there was the business side: prices were negotiated and a budget set up.

The work behind the scenes was worth it: in the Spring of 2003 HKU Libraries loaded the initial batch of over 8,000 titles from the CCDM consortium. The collection grew to about 15,000 titles over the next 12 months. To help users get the most out of the collection, the library paid for the use of the Adobe Content Server starting from the Summer of 2004. This software lets users download certain e-books in the collection to their own computers or PDAs for a day or a week to read offline at their leisure.

The usage of the e-book collection at HKU was very encouraging. It accounted for 20% of the total usage by HKU, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College and Middlebury College. Users of the HKU Libraries accessed e-books 62,000 times during the first year.

Page from one of the most popular NetLibrary e-books among HKU users: Owen Fennema’s book Food Chemistry. The figure on this page shows a sweet molecule (click to enlarge).

In the Summer of 2005, HKU Libraries joined forces with over 40 other university libraries in Hong Kong and Taiwan to form the NetLibrary Super e-Book Consortium. Members of the consortium recommend and decide together which e-books to buy.

As of 2006, the HKU Libraries’ NetLibrary e-book collection included around 50,000 titles, about half of the entire NetLibrary collection. Over 20,000 of these can be downloaded for offline reading. Business, economics and management e-books make up about 20% of the collection; followed by language and linguistics (about 16%); social sciences (about 12%); and medicine, biology and life sciences (about 12%); with other areas making up the rest of the collection. As a member of the NetLibrary Super e-Book Consortium, HKU Libraries focuses on selecting e-books in medicine, biology and life sciences, subject areas that have been most in demand by HKU users.

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Get more information about NetLibrary.