Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/87421
We as librarians should actively engage with the ILS vendors to encourage them to become the hosts of our e-books. technical services department. Transferring these tasks to e-books was therefore already within our department's job description. How did we tackle this beast? Our firm confronted some issues with the publishers who offered us their e-books. Wolters Kluwer We began with Wolters Kluwer. The company already had a management tool for libraries to register users and set up IDs and passwords. At that stage, their eDis platform was hosted by their parent company in the Netherlands. Although the site was in English, notifications arrived in Dutch, an oddity that needed to be explained to the lawyers. We were able to log in to the eDis site and begin the process of registering lawyers who volunteered to test a digital version of the "Takeovers" treatise. An acknowledgement email message was sent to each person who registered. The following steps were necessary to complete the transaction: • The end user was required to go to the Apple app store to download the proprietary eDis software. • Once the app was installed, they registered with the user name and password from the Dutch language email authorization. • The user was then able to download the e-book. At that time, they could choose to open it in one of several applications, including the commonly used iBooks. • Once the e-book was on the user's device, it could be found in the iBooks library, and the end user did not have to use the eDis app to read the e-book. One partner responded to an internal survey at the end of the trial-use period. He said he found the e-book convenient as he had used it to find specific information while out of the office. He added that although e-books were useful for home and travel, he would not want to substitute digital for print. On pricing, he was adamant that we should not pay a premium for e-books. To my knowledge, no lawyer filled out the evaluation requested by the publisher. As of this writing, Wolters Kluwer has not released the e-book platform for use in the U.S., although they did demonstrate it at the AALL annual conference in Boston. The company is publishing about 70 e-book titles, including a large amount of materials for the academic market of law students. CCH-branded books, primarily tax titles, are available on the website for direct purchase. 68 AALL/ILTA White Paper