Hi All,

I recently learned of another possible source of electronic books which can
be found at:

http://www.netlibrary.com

The web site indicates that  they have some 8,000 electronic books
available and are adding 30-50 titles a day.

Titles excluding the free books that are linked from just about every
online electronic book site can be browsed starting at:

http://www.netlibrary.com/t_browse.asp?RM=1&EAS=&EFS=&FLIP=EXCLUDEFREE

Authors, again excluding all the public domain texts, can be viewed
starting at:

http://www.netlibrary.com/a_browse.asp?RM=1&EAS=&EFS=&FLIP=EXCLUDEFREE

In both cases the full collection of books, including public domain works,
can be browsed by deleting the string

&FLIP=EXCLUDEFREE

from the previous addresses.

Whether you are browsing by title or author, you must first select a letter
from the alphabet to start your browse.  Within your chosen letter, use a
combo box that's one of the last links on the page to move between pages of
listings under that letter.

I have browsed a couple of the free books and they seem to come up in a web
page that is mixed with respect to accessibility.  Links to jump to
previous and next pages in a document seem quite obvious but an option to
use a table of contents has multiple linksthat are cryptic strings with no
alt tags such as

http://www.netlibrary.com/api-bin/viewbook.dll?clientID=526946&EV=151363&Max
records=1000000&depth=3&expand={48}&hitsperheading=on&infobase=2008441.nfo&r
ecord={1}&softpage=Wrap_TOC#{48}

mixed in with links to different sections of a document.  I'm not certain
what the cryptic links do but the text links in the table of contents work
as one would expect.

The paying options of the site indicate that one can check out a book from
the library for online reading for a period of eight hours at a
time.  Supposedly the server will serve up a book to only one library
member at a time so if the book you want to read is already checked out, it
is to the wait list for you.  I have not tested how the text is displayed
with this option but the online help talks about opening up a new window
that alerts you to things like how much time you have left and such.

 From the list of books I browsed, the offerings in this library seem to be
in the technical, academic and professional arenas.  No pulp fiction or
action thrillers that I could quickly recognize in either the title or
author listings.

The for fee options are available for an introductory rate of $9.95 which
gives you 90 days of access to the library.  The web site also indicates
that NetLibrary is working with physical libraries to offer their services
to library patrons.  The list of libraries listed is very small just
now.  I learned of this resource when reading a press release that said
that NetLibrary had just signed on with Amigos Library Services that offers
other library services to about 600 libraries.  More details on Amigos
Library Services can be found at:

http://www.amigos.org

Below are selections from the Press Release

BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 8, 1999--netLibrary(TM)
(www.netLibrary.com), the world's premier provider of electronic books and
information, announced a shared eBook resources partnership today with
Amigos Library Services, Inc., a membership-based library network serving
more than 600 public, academic, and special libraries in the southwestern
United States.

In this groundbreaking partnership, Amigos has agreed to acquire a
collection of as many as 28,000 electronic books from netLibrary and offer
them as a shared resource to member libraries in the Amigos network. The
three-year agreement is valued at $1.6 million with the initial 12 months
of the agreement providing for 13,000 eBooks valued in excess of half a
million dollars.

netLibrary has signed agreements with over 75 leading publishers, including
Harvard Business Press, AMACOM, ABC-CLIO, Cambridge University Press,
Columbia University Press, Grove's Dictionaries Inc., Houghton-Mifflin,
Macmillan Publishers Ltd. UK, The McGraw-Hill Companies, The MIT Press, and
O'Reilly, to provide its customers with an extensive selection of
scholarly, reference, and professional books in electronic format.

netLibrary converts hard-copy books to a proprietary electronic format,
storing them on netLibrary servers and then converting them to HTML as
library patrons request them from a personal computer.

About Amigos

Amigos Library Services, Inc., is dedicated to serving libraries. A
nonprofit organization, Amigos is one of the nation's largest library
resource-sharing networks and a leader in providing information technology
to libraries.

The Amigos Membership consists of over 600 libraries and cultural
institutions located primarily in the southwestern United States that
utilize its comprehensive line of services, including cataloging,
reference, resource sharing, preservation, consulting and training.


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