EBSCO Rolls Out 64 New Ebook Subject Sets

As part of the ongoing expansion of its ebook offerings, EBSCO Publishing recently announced 64 new ebook subject sets. Customer feedback and requests for particular subject areas "played a large role" in the new selections, according to the announcement.

The new subject sets contain between eight and 35 titles, including a number of textbooks, and are priced from less than $400 to nearly $3000. They address a wide range of subjects, from philosophy and literary criticism to robotics and engineering mathematics. The broader collection areas that have been expanded include Arts & Humanities, Business, Information Technology, Medical, Personal Growth & General Education, Science & Technology, Social & Cultural Issues, Social Sciences, and Vocational Education. With these additions, EBSCO now offers more than 200 subject sets.

EBSCO first previewed its unified ebook and database platform in March 2011, a year after its acquisition of NetLibrary from OCLC. In July, EBSCO rolled out its collection of 300,000 ebook and audiobook titles. It has since been developing acquisition models such as short-term leases, subscriptions, and expanded patron-driven acquisition (PDA), due later in the year.

EBSCO is also pursuing ways to deliver ebook content from the HathiTrust digital repository. It unveiled plans earlier this month to the integrate full-text HathiTrust search capability into its EBSCO Discovery Service, which will make the texts of the repository's 9.5 million-plus digitized works searchable. OCLC announced similar plans this month for WorldCat; ProQuest unit Serials Solutions announced such functionality for Summon in March.