1. EBook Models that Work
Dr. David M. Hart
Director, Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty
2. Liberty Fund, inc.
founded in 1960 as a non-profit educational foundation located
in Indianapolis, IN.
its aim is to encourage an understanding of, and an ongoing
conversation about, liberty in all its manifestations - individual,
political, economic, legal
each year LF organizes 160 conferences and publishes 20 books,
and hosts 2 websites - the Library of Economics and Liberty, the
Online Library of Liberty
3. The Online Library of Liberty
over 1,500 titles by over 400 authors
designed for scholars, teachers, students, and interested general
public - free access for educational purposes
9,000 visits (sessions) per day; 167,000 visits per month; visitors
from over 160 countries
in its 2nd year of operation 3.6m pages (html/php) were
requested, 3.8m downloads (PDF/mp3); 14,000 GB downloaded
December 2005 winner of a National Endowment for the
Humanities “Best of the Humanities on the Web” award
4.
5. Strengths of the OLL
unique content focussed on a niche market
added educational value
its cost
texts in multiple formats
6. Content: 3 Core Components
a modified version of the Great Books Program - based on Great
Books Program developed at the University of Chicago, the 100
names on the walls of the Seminar Room of Wabash College
library
electronic versions of books published by LF - classics about
liberty which have gone out of print
other books drawn from the classical liberal and free market
tradition
7. Supporting Material
not just “electronic books sitting on electronic shelves”
we make our material educationally useful with author bios and
brief descriptions of all the texts
authors and titles are given meaning by being placed in their
historical and intellectual context
authors are placed into “groups” - nationality, historical period,
schools of thought, debates
titles are placed into “collections” - disciplines, topics, debates
8. Cost
the OLL and Econlib are made available free of charge to the
public for educational use and to further the aims of Liberty
Fund
access via the WWW and on DVD - The Portable Library of
Liberty with 700 EBooks
$1m per year budget
we spend tens of thousands of dollars per year to license the
electronic rights for important material, e.g. Adam Smith and
OUP, David Ricardo and CUP, J.S. Mill and U. Toronto P.
9. Texts in 3 Different Formats
facsimile PDF of the original so scholars can go back to the text;
to display historically interesting and rare editions, e.g. Locke,
Shakespeare
XML/HTML: a well-thought out and sophisticated DTD allows
us to build an XML repository to serve up HTML versions of the
title which can be creatively searched and nicely formated
EBook PDF created from the HTML version - a self-contained
version of the book which can be downloaded or distributed on
CD/DVD (the Portable Library of Liberty)
10. Portable Library of Liberty
designed as a promotional item and as a pedagogical tool
contains over 700 titles from the OLL in EBook PDF format
text-based PDF made from the HTML version of our titles
also contains info about author, title, copyright, fair use, links
back to OLL
no need to have access to the WWW, self-contained,
independently searchable (Acrobat Reader or Preview)
satisfies needs of readers in developing countries
16. Liberty Fund’s EBooks 1
successful because they are free? perhaps ...
we give away our EBooks in part as a promotional tool, but also
to fulfill our mission statement, to get hard to find or out of
print material into the hands of teachers and students, to
provide scholarly material to people in developing countries
who do not have access to these resources
our EBooks are part of a larger collection, the Online Library of
Liberty, which contains facs. PDFs, HTMLs, supporting material
- so the EBooks, especially on the Portable Library of Liberty
DVD, are designed to lead readers back to the main site to find
out more
17. Liberty Fund’s EBooks 2
our EBooks are derived from sources which are legal,
professionally scanned and proofread, coded to a well thought
out and sophisticated DTD, and are designed with the needs of
scholars and students in mind
they are self-contained versions of our HTML titles which do
not need access to the WWW to be read - the PDF package
contains all the text, images, glyphs, and other server side
includes necessary to read the text
unlike the HTML version they have fixed pagination which
allows for unambiguous scholarly citation of the text
18. Liberty Fund’s EBooks 3
unlike the image-based facs. PDF our EBooks are much smaller
in size
using freely available PDF readers like Acrobat Reader or
Apple’s Preview our EBooks can be searched rapidly for key
words, thus providing our readers with a useful scholarly
resource
scholars and students like to “own” their own copy of books, so
we encourage them to download a title or request a copy of the
Portable Library of Liberty DVD (with 700 titles)
19.
20. Liberty Fund’s EBooks 4
for readers in developing countries with limited access to the
WWW or to traditional libraries, EBooks on CD or DVD give
them access to resources they would not otherwise have
until a truly user-friendly, dedicated EBook reader is developed
we believe that desktop and laptop computers will be the main
way EBooks will be read and that the PDF format is the most
ubiquitous and cheapest way to read EBooks
by having all our online texts in XML format we are well
positioned to supply content in any new format which might
appear in the future
21. The Most Requested PDF Titles in Early March 2006
Hits/Day Request
943.9 /Texts/MillJS0172/Works/Vol16/0223.16.pdf
619.3 /Texts/MillJS0172/Works/Vol03/PDFs/0223.03_Pt01_Book3.pdf
485.4 /Texts/MillJS0172/Works/Vol28/0223.28.pdf
467.3 /EBooks/Acton_0108.pdf
303.0 /EBooks/Bacon_0415.pdf
302.6 /EBooks/Mill_0199.pdf
298.0 /EBooks/Bacon_0414.pdf
240.1 /EBooks/Henderson_0145.pdf
192.0 /Texts/Erasmus0096/PraiseOfFolly/0136_Bk.pdf
119.9 /Texts/Hooker0127/Works/0172-01_Bk.pdf
106.1 /Texts/LFBooks/Mises0184/Money/0070_eBk.pdf
102.0 /Texts/Hooker0127/Works/0172-02_Bk.pdf
98.3 /EBooks/Hamilton_0084.pdf
96.7 /Texts/Gaius0102/Institutes/0533_Bk.pdf
83.6 /Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-08_Bk.pdf
80.3 /Texts/LFBooks/Henderson0119/.../0145_eBk.pdf
79.7 /Texts/MillJS0172/Works/Vol02/0223.02.pdf
74.0 /Texts/Mohammed0186/Koran/0230_Bk.pdf
73.3 /Texts/Clarkson0548/SlaveTrade/0591-01_Bk.pdf
71.9 /Texts/Hammurabi0113/Code/0762_Bk.pdf
22. The Most Requested PDF Titles by Number of Downloads
Here is a list of the top 20 requested PDF titles over the past 14
months. They include 6 works of economics, 6 philosophy, 5 history or
political theory, and 3 religion:
Requests Title
75,000 Henderson’s Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
61,000 JS Mill, Principles of Political Economy
54,273 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations vol. 1
50,383 Voltaire, Candide
37,945 Cicero, Nature of the Gods
37,466 The Federalist
34,915 Mises, Theory of Money and Credit
30,796 Tevor-Roper, The Crisis of the 17th Century
30,151 Lord Acton, The History of Freedom
29,796 Erasmus, The Praise of Folly
27,196 Gaius, The Institutes
24,872 Hobbes, Leviathan
23,493 Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments
22,185 Banning, Liberty and Order
21,041 Cicero, Letters
20,733 John Adams, Writings
20,638 The Koran
19,312 Mises, Socialism
19,217 Mises, Human Action
17,775 Calvin, Institutes
23. Conclusions
the OLL provides a high quality niche online library to our
target audience of scholars, educators, and students in the
humanities
EBooks in PDF format are part of a tripartite platform for the
delivery of texts: image-based facs. PDF, XML/HTML versions,
text-based EBook PDFs
1,500 titles are offered free of charge to the public for
educational purposes both via the WWW (all 3 formats) and on
DVD (EBook only)
EBook PDFs allow readers to “own” their own self-contained
copy of the text
