Yankee Book and Ebook library launch combined print and eBook acquisition work flow.

From their press release:

YBP Library Services, a Baker & Taylor company, and Ebook Library (EBL) announce the launch of the first comprehensive demand-driven workflow for print and e-book acquisition. The two companies will combine the book-in-hand descriptions and preferences from YBP's approval process with EBL's flexible real-time On Demand acquisition service, offering a robust just-in-time approach to delivering e-books and print books.

"Demand-driven acquisitions are a new way of helping our library customers to better serve their patrons," said Mark Kendall, Senior Vice President of Sales for YBP. "This partnership with EBL is a groundbreaking effort to add value."

EBL is a division of Ebooks Corporation Limited, an Australian public company with additional distribution channels that include ebooks.com (www.ebooks.com), the leading dedicated ebook retail site, and Ebook Services for publishers (http://www.ebookscorp.com/publishers.html). EBL's multi-user and demand-driven access models have been widely adopted by libraries around the world. EBL's ever-expanding catalogue currently offers over 150,000 titles from over more than 400 international publishers in a vast range of academic and professional subject areas.

This new service will enable libraries to use YBP's approval profiling methodologies to automatically designate new books as DDA (demand-driven acquisition), rather than receive the titles as an automatic book or as a slip. Titles designated as DDA will automatically be made available for patron-driven selection in EBL's On Demand platform. The initial launch of the DDA-Approval workflow will be available for e-books and then will be extended to incorporate print books from select publishers. The service will gradually incorporate an increasing percentage of the books YBP handles on approval.

"We are very pleased to enhance our On Demand service with YBP's outstanding approval plan tools and to add print books alongside e-books to our platform," said Kari Paulson, President of EBL. "EBL has been working for many years to provide innovative demand-driven acquisition services, and we believe the work we are doing with YBP is a step toward delivering the next generation of tools for providing a streamlined, end-to-end service for our libraries."