Caveat Lector

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has an article on NetLibrary after its takeover by OCLC. I am cautiously optimistic; certainly OCLC has a clue, and from what I am reading they are moving in good directions. The milk-it-for-moolah management is gone, at least. I should like to know what they’ve done with production—but as I understand it, the production floor was the first thing NetLibrary fired when it first got into trouble, so perhaps OCLC had no difficulty moving in a better system.

Moreover, both publishers and libraries seem to be entering sadder-but-wiser mode, neither foolishly exuberant nor angrily skeptical. That’s good. And if academic publishers are getting interested, even better.

The juicy tidbit occurs near the end of the article:

The University of Chicago Press sold about 100 older titles to the service years ago, she added. However, the press is not expanding its relationship with netLibrary because it is developing its own electronic-delivery service, Ms. Summerfield added.

They are, are they? Interesting. Are they really developing something in-house, or is this statement just code for talking to other potential distribution channels?