At iFactory, we are a team of individuals working to deliver innovative, inspiring, intelligent interactive solutions to some of the world’s leading institutions. While we’re quite the team, we thought we’d start sharing some of our individuality with you via a series we’re calling, “What We’re Reading”. It’s an opportunity for you to catch a glimpse into each of our lives, and to boot—you’ll get some great book recommendations!

This week: Jesse Grant, iFactory Engineer

What are you reading?
The Confusion—the second book in the Boroque Cycle trilogy. It’s classic Neal Stephenson all the way.

Your thoughts?
I’ve been a huge fan of [Stephenson's] for awhile and I love the way he blends together pedantic lessons on history and science, with totally exciting and enthralling storytelling.

Print or Digital?
Digital. Amazon Kindle app on my Android phone.

American Library Association Conference June 2010: recurring conversation topics

With libraries undergoing an almost universal experience—migrating from print to electronic collections, while experiencing budget constraints— talk at this summer’s annual American Library Association (ALA) conference orbited around several common topics and one primary question:

How do we meet the library patron/customer/user where they are?

In conversations with librarians, publishers, technologists, and e-book aggregators, the iFactory team was impressed by the shared goal to provide content and research tools that are topically relevant, oriented to the user experience, and make research more efficient.   From these conversations, the iFactory team picked up on some obvious trends that are relevant to the PubFactory platform and our publishing partners.

• Mixed content – Most library users don’t know or care about the difference between reference works, monographs, and journals. They simply want to search and find the content they need to address their research questions. Publishers and librarians are actively considering the reality of integrating journal and reference content on common platforms. This benefits users by limiting access control hurdles, making reference content more discoverable, and providing contextually relevant article-to-article links that allow users to continue their research. As librarian Sue Polanka recorded in her summary from ALA, linking journal and reference content provides some measure of solution to the number one publishing challenge—discoverability.
• Platform interlinking – Just like the mixed content platforms, users want content to be linked between platforms so the can simply jump from resource to resource in pursuit of their relevant topics. Credo Reference and ebrary created some ripples at ALA with the announcement that Credo’s Topic Pages will include ebrary content.
• Free content – More than ever, online publishers are discussing free content strategies as a way to drive discoverability of library resources. With most library users beginning their research with a Google search, having free content that links authenticated users straight into subscription resources is an important strategy for publishers. The release of the Oxford Dictionaries Online free site is an example of how PubFactory supports this strategy for Oxford University Press.
• Mobile devices – The consensus is that the ubiquity of mobile devices on campus will influence scholarly research and reference, but how? Check out this presentation on mobile trends by digital publishing consultant Alix Vance from earlier in June.
• PDA is hot* – Patron Driven Access is the rage among the e-book aggregators. While EBL has pioneered this model, ebrary and Netlibrary have recently expanded their offerings to include demand driven accounts. With patron driven access, users and their research needs drive library collection development. As Cindi Trainor of Eastern Kentucky University said about PDA, “You ask for it, we get it for you.” For an interesting case study, check out this University of Texas, Austin review of their pilot PDA program that opened the entire EBL’s catalogue to the library.

*NOT this kind of PDA!

Implications and questions for PubFactory and our publishing partners

A few weeks following ALA, the iFactory team is asking how these trends impact PubFactory. What do we need to be working on to address the needs of our publishing partners and their end users?

The iFactory team built PubFactory to provide an out-of-the-box platform solution for publishers that can integrate mixed content in a seamless user experience. With libraries and users demanding integrated content, the next step for PubFactory is to continue to work with publishing partners to link relevant article level content together. The goal, here, is to answer the user question: Where do I go next after reading this article?

Following this same user question, what can PubFactory do to facilitate authenticated linking between our various publishing partner’s products? How can PubFactory support linking to eBook aggregator and other non-PubFactory platforms?

The importance of a free content strategy will further the role of PubFactory as platform that supports institutional access while simultaneous allowing a flexible firewall and search engine optimization that helps to ensure publisher resources will be discoverable for library users.

How will publisher platforms influence the way students and scholars conduct research on their mobile devices? How does a library patron’s mobile experience sync with a Web-based resource experience?

With the eBook aggregators forging a PDA business model, will publishers be offering demand driven access to their entire digital catalogue?

Following this summer’s ALA, the PubFactory team and our publishing partners will be spending more time putting ourselves in the shoes of the end user.

Recently, we announced another collaboration with Oxford University Press, this time on the design of the newly launched Oxford Bibliographies Online. Chris Reidy of the Boston Globe ran a news update that appeared online, and in the Globe’s digital newsletter.

Take a look!

Whether you arrived here by way of our new website, or by other means—we encourage you to explore our new site!

http://www.ifactory.com

Tools of Change 2010: observations, reactions, thoughts

This year’s Tools of Change Conference in NYC, in the wake of the iPad publishing wars, and the launch of our own platform, PubFactory, proved to be both pivotal and exciting for we folks at iFactory.

We participated in two days of informative sessions, and on the final day, delivered another successful demo of PubFactory to an engaged audience. The conference, for us, wrapped up with a keynote from our client, Frances Pinter of Bloomsbury Academic. She walked her audience through the new thinking behind the role and funding of academic book publishing, and [we proudly note], gave an incredible plug for PubFactory, the platform Bloomsbury Academic chose for their soon-to-be-launched website.

The intermittent weather aside, we headed back to Boston feeling fulfilled, enlightened, and eager to share our experience with our colleagues and clients. What follows, are just a few reflections on all that we gained and shared at Tools of Change 2010:

Continue reading…

HOW GOOD IS IT? I have truly just scratched the surface of this mammoth work of scholarship—to do it justice would take reams of paper or gigabytes of e-space. For Bible scholars, this will be a tremendously useful resource, and Oxford breaks the one-to-ten rating scale once again: this file is an astonishing 11.

FULL REVIEW

Updated every six months, the newly launched Oxford Biblical Studies Online (OBSO) contains the Access Study Bible with Apocrypha, the Authorized King James Bible with Apocrypha, the Catholic Study Bible (2d ed.), the Jewish Study Bible, the New Oxford Annotated Bible (3d ed.), and the Oxford Study Bible, as well as Oxford Bible Commentary, Oxford Companion to the Bible, Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies, Oxford History of the Biblical World, Oxford Dictionary of the Bible, Oxford Encyclopedia of Archeology in the Near East, Encyclopedia of Dead Sea Scrolls, The Apocryphal Old Testament, The Apocryphal New Testament, and How To Read the Bible. It also comprises about 5000 scholarly articles, including content from Oxford’s forthcoming Encyclopaedia of the Bible (2011–12), interactive time lines, maps, illustrations, and a bibliography.
Continue reading…

11/2008 : Ten iFactory sites listed in top 180 eReference sites at LibraryJournal.com
iFactory designed and built 10 out of the top 180 eReference websites, based on a recent report from LibraryJournal.com. Sites were judged on categories such as design, value, ease of use and “bells & whistles”.

We created the following eReference products:

• Columbia Gazetteer of the World
• Columbia Granger’s World of Poetry
• Oxford African American Studies Center
• Oxford American National Biography
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online
• Oxford Islamic Studies Online
• Oxford Who’s Who (and Who Was Who)
• Praeger Security International Online
• Rosen Publishing’s Teen Health and Wellness
• SAGE eReference

Check out LibraryJournal.com for more information!