ebrary: building bridges between islands of information. an email interview with Christopher Warnock, CEO, ebrary (http://www.ebrary.com)
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/03055720210734777 |
| Pages | 52-54 |
| Published date | 01 June 2002 |
| Date | 01 June 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
ebrary: building
bridges between
islands of information
http://www.ebrary.com
an email interview with Christopher
Warnock, CEO, ebrary
In the Library Association Record,February2001
Phillippa Dolphin wrote a scornful attack on what
she called the ``dot.com'' libraries, questia,
xanedu and ebrary
1
. In a sense that piece of
writing was firmly in the tradition of ``anti-
Americanisation'': seeing the new digitallibraries
as a dumbing down and commercialisation of
education, and mocking their ``cool'' image.
Simply too the content of their electroniclibraries
was too American. And would easy access to so
much full text encourage plagiarism?, she asked.
But Dolphin also acknowledged that there was a
serious threat here to traditional libraries: ``a
student working part-time or full-time on an
undergraduate course would probably welcome
the prospect of searchinga large electronic library
from home at any time of day for £70 a year''.
Eighteen months later the dot.com bubble has
burst, and the wave of hype about ``e-books'' has
collapsed. But ebrary are still there (as are
questia, xanedu and netlibrary). Ironically in the
long run the timing of the collapse may have
helped them. Warnock says:
``The collapsing wave of hype surrounding
the Internet and eBooks certainly did not do
us any favors. Had we been able to execute
our plans more quickly, we might have been
able to capitalize on the hype to launch our
service, but our missing that first wave may
have actually set us up to ride a much bigger
wave, and put us in a positionto be in front.''
Unrealistic expectations about ebooks have
evaporated, and for many readers, he
acknowledges, the printed book is a perfect
technology, but Warnock is convinced that there
is a ``persistent'' demand on all sides for
electronic full text.
And ebrary are now increasingly library friendly.
They see their primary business as selling
ebrarian for Libraries.Theyhaverecently
changed their pricing model to ``all-you-can-eat'',
in response to libraries' need to write only
predictable expenditures into their budgets.
Another landmark in this country is that in June
2002 the University of Staffordshire library
became the first UK library to sign up to ebrarian.
It seemed a timely moment to talk to the company
and so we conducted an email interview with
CEO Christopher Warnock in May 2002, all
quotes in the text are to his words.
Origins of the company
ebrary was founded by Christopher Warnock and
Kevin Sayar, (now President). Warnock came up
with the idea while he was at the University of
Utah. He wanted to build a recumbent bicycle, so
he went to the library for information. At that
time, half of the titles were in the card catalogues,
the other half were in the library's first OPAC
system. Engineering books were in the basement,
books about bikes were on the third floor and
periodicals were on the 4th floor in microfiche.
Researching how to build the bike was not an
easy process. That's when the idea for ebrary
came into his mind. He had used a Macintosh
since high school, and knew how easy finding
information within documents could be.
``I literally, finally, found a book that was
there, where it was supposed to be and
looking at its mass thought, `...at some point
all of this information will be accessible on
the computer'. That moment has spawned
hundreds of sleepless nights thinking about
how this could be made to work.''
The ebrary vision
``The vision is to build bridges between
islands of information and facilitating the
migration of valuable, authoritative
information to the Internet through libraries
will help people pursue their dreams, or
possibly help them make their ideas a
reality.''
ebrary is not a digital library, as such, Warnock
says, or an ebook vendor; though they may could
do both, among other things.
#MCB UP Limited, ISSN 0305-5728
52 Ð VINE, Volume 32 Number 2 2002, Issue 127
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