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Ebooks 2013

Ebooks: New models, new products, new opportunities, new tools

University College London, 9th May 2013, 10.00 to 17.00

The Anatomy JZ Young Lecture Theatre.

The next event in this series of annual meetings at University College will address the twin themes of emerging business models, including open access and self published ebooks, as well as the developing tools to manage and discover these. Expert speakers have been invited to cover these issues in a one day event to be held under the direction of the Centre for Publishing.

Ebook technologies are making it easier and easier to distribute content digitally so that we have seen a plethora of new business models emerging with very different approaches to traditional publishing. These involve open source or open access publishing, typically in the academic sector for research monographs, self publishing in novels and short fiction, part publishing and even paid for publishing to support international scholarly works. There are other developments, for example: a resurrection of University and professional publishing, with even small universities starting publishing ventures; the notion of libraries as publishers which is now well documented; and print on demand which has ensured that no book need any longer go out of print. Couple all of this with emerging tools such as Linked data and other discovery tools and new and innovative ebook platforms and it can be seen that there is significant change underway.

Thus this one day event will look at experiences and ideas from all these sectors and debate the opportunities for the future. Key speakers will look at the strategic, technical and business perspectives and the whole will as usual appeal to a wide range of stakeholders including librarians, university and academic publishers, aggregators and researchers. The keynote this year will be a strategic overview from Lorraine Estelle, the CEO of JISC Collections with a unique insight into the needs of academic consumers as well as bringing a perspective from her earlier career as a publisher; she is in a unique position to understand how digital publishing industries are changing. Other presentations on new etext book platforms will come from Jeni Evans from Ingram and Vitalsource and Andrejs Alferovs of Kortext; Richard Wallis, Technology Evangelist from OCLC, and Robert Faber, Director of the Discoverability Program from OUP, will both look at issues of discoverability in a session on linked data; Caren Milloy will talk about the Oapen open access ebook project and Nick Canty of the UCL Centre for Publishing itself will speak about libraries as publisher, and social media. Studies will also come from Ubiquity Press, a new university based open access start up, and Will Russell of the Royal Society of Chemistry who will address their eBooks programme.

The conference will, as usual be at the very economic rate 115 for the day. A full programme will be availed in due course.

Registration fee: £115 per delegate
* Please click here to download the registration form

* Please click here for the programme

Venue: The conference will be held in the Anatomy JZ Young Lecture Theatre in the Anatomy Building. Google map link: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/estates/roombooking/building-location/?id=016

For any queries, please contact infostudies admin at infostudies-conferences@ucl.ac.uk