Legal research giant LexisNexis now has an e-book library application for law firms, based on a partnership with digital content distributor OverDrive, officials said Monday. Until now, legal professionals could only buy Lexis' 1,100 e-books individually. The new Digital Library product gives firms customizable software from which lawyers can check out titles, and for librarians to establish lending policies.
"About a year and a half ago, we started introducing our e-books into the market in a piloted way," noted Lexis' Susan Slisz, vice president of research. Customers asked for administrative tools, leading Lexis to find OverDrive, she said. "We looked at that and said it's kind of what we need. We worked with [OverDrive] to create a custom solution for law firms."
Slisz said her team has other features in mind. "Our e-books have links today into Lexis.com. In the very short future we're going to have links into Lexis Advance," she said. An automatic update feature for e-books is also planned, and a version for law school books is under way, she added.
Digital Library is priced based on the number of users and based on content, officials said, declining to share exact figures. It includes about 1,100 titles from New York-based Lexis and thousands more from OverDrive's partners, such as Bloomsbury, HarperCollins, Penguin Group, and Random House. Lexispartner content, such as the archives of ALM magazines, is not yet included. (ALM is the parent of Law Technology News.)
On mobile devices such as the Apple iPad, Lexis will offer rebranded versions of OverDrive's Media Console software. Books reside separately from Apple's iBooks library because of copyright issues, an OverDrive representative said, in Cleveland. In other e-book news recently, information services company Wolters Kluwer and software company Inkling announced Bar Prep for iPad, applicable to California and multistate bar examinations. It costs $349.99 for the combined edition or $29.99 per section. In addition, Wolters now has desktop, Apple iOS, and Google Android versions of the Bouvier Law Dictionary, officials at the company's New York-based legal division said. It costs $29.95and has features such as bookmarking, flash card learning, audible pronunciation, and word-of-the-day. Links to Wolter's LoisLaw research service are "a possibility" in the future, publisher Carol McGeehan said. The original 1853 version of Bouvier's, published online in 2009, remains available for $2.99. Meanwhile, Apple and others are being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice for alleged price fixing, with online specialist Amazon.com as their target.
Source | http://www.law.com
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