University Times

Many University Press titles to be available electronically this year

The University of Pittsburgh Press will provide a portion of its scholarly and reference books to netLibrary, a leading provider of electronic books and information on the Inter net.

netLibrary converts hard-copy books to a proprietary electronic format, stores them on the netLibrary server and then converts them to HTML as users request them. The service expects to have about 8,000 titles available by the end of 1999.

"In order to meet the rapidly changing needs of libraries, we need to think strategically about our approach to distributing scholarly works and the ways technology can help us," said Jennifer Flanagan, marketing director at the Press. In addition, netLib rary will provide direct links to on-line booksellers, which will lead to increased hard copy sales, she said.