The Online Advantage

Online ebooks from Canadian Electronic Library and ebrary were initially designed for use in academic settings. But some characteristics translate very well into public and school library environments.

In CEL platform, all books are available to all users all the time. Instructors can give students links for reading assignments, students can set up their own bookshelves and share links and notes with their peers, citations can be created for use in student papers, and links can be embedded in courseware packages. And the host library can customize the Infotools module to provide institution-specific links to direct students to other resources.

For example, here are links that could be shared by instructors or students doing work on Canadian health care reform:

They could cite a group of titles like this.

Or a particular title:
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/celtitles/docDetail.action?docID=10410827

Or an individual page:
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/celtitles/docDetail.action?docID=10410827&p02

In a downloadable environment, none of this functionality is possible because each book needs to be checked out for dedicated use.

For public libraries, Online books offer additional advantages which are not available with Downloadable ebooks.

The most critical difference lies in integration with library catalogues. Libraries want their ebook collections to be fully integrated with their OPACs. In the case of Downloadable books, this is not possible. In order to maintain the DRM "wrappers" around their books, Downloadable suppliers must maintain their own search interfaces, which are separate from library OPACs.

On the other hand, Online books from CEL and ebrary are easily integrated with the library OPAC, so that the library can offer one single interface to its clients.

Additional points of comparison and difference: