ebrary (the "e" is lower case) was an online digital library which held over 100,000 scholarly e-books in 2014. It was available in many academic libraries and provided a set of online database collections that combined scholarly books from over 435 academic, trade, and professional publishers. It also included sheet music (9,000 titles) and government documents. Additionally, ebrary offered a service called "DASH!" for customers to distribute their own PDF content online.
ebrary had 2,700 subscribers (mostly libraries) at the end of 2009. Users gained access through a subscribing library and could view, search, copy, and print documents from their computers.
ebrary was founded in 1999 by friends Christopher Warnock and Kevin Sayar. It was headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and was acquired by ProQuest in 2011."ProQuest Ebook Central enters beta." Smart Libraries Newsletter, vol. 35, no. 8, Aug. 2015, p. 6. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A426444231/ITOF?u=tamp44898&sid=ITOF&xid=09f847f2. Accessed 22 Nov. 2020. In 2015, ProQuest replaced ebrary with ProQuest Ebook Central. Before it was replaced, it held over 900,000 documents.
Reception Staffordshire University in England supplied texts to ebrary and encouraged use by students and faculty. A study of usage there reported, "The ability for students and researchers to search across the full content of 30,000 e‐books in one 'go' and then capture that information quickly and easily is also very valuable."David Parkes, "E-books from ebrary at Staffordshire University: a case study." Program 41.3 (2007): 253–261. At Hacettepe University, a large school in Turkey, usage had proven valuable because of the limited library collection.Tonta, Yaşar, Umut Al, and İrem Soydal. "Analysis of E-book Use: The Case of ebrary." Proceedings ELPUB2010 – Conference on Electronic Publishing June 2010 – Helsinki, Finland (2010): 315–329. online
More generally, Anne Morris and Panos Balatsoukas reported that other universities also had studied usage and considered ebrary a valuable resource.Anne Morris and Panos Balatsoukas. "Usability evaluation of Ebrary and Overdrive e-book online systems." Libraries without walls 6 (2006): 211–223.
References
Journal articles
Fialkoff, Francine. "The Book Is Not Dead," Library Journal, (June 15, 2009) Vol. 134 Issue 11 Godwin-Jones, Robert. "E-Books and the Tablet PC," Language, Learning & Technology Vol. 7, 2003 Mullarkey, Marty. "Ebrary and two international e-Book surveys." The Acquisitions Librarian 19.3–4 (2008): 213–230. Qiuping, Zhang, and Yuan Hao. "Integration of Ebrary Electronic Books to OPAC System." Library Journal 1 (2008): 007. Raisinghani, Mahesh S. "Wireless Library Aids Student Productivity," T H E Journal Vol. 30, 2002
External links Archived version of the ebrary website "The State of Worldwide Library eBook Lending" by Michael Kozlowski