On 27 Oct 2011, Springer organized its inaugural Asia Library Road Show at the Pan Pacific Singapore Hotel – it was well attended by Librarians from various institutions in Singapore that were interested to find out what has been happening to Springer’s development of product and services.
LAS Council members present were: Mrs Lee Cheng Ean (Vice President LAS), Patrick Pu (Chair, Business Development, LAS) and Yit Chin Chuan (Chair, Publications, LAS). Mrs. Lee was invited as a speaker and she shared NUS Libraries’ experiences in enhancing access to collections for their users.
Springer’s executive VP Ms. Juliane Ritt shared the trends in publications and Springer’s plan to move more into the electronic platform. By 2012/2013 – Print on Demand is likely become a service options for books that are born digital. From Springer’s perspective both a revolution and evolution process is happening to the publication industry: there is a revolution in terms of a shift from print-based to electronic-based publishing; and there is an evolution of technology and business models relating to this change.
Harald Wirsching, Director of Market Intelligence and Web Analytics shared an interesting finding with the audience – users are using eBooks not as a replacement for physical books but as a means to find relevant information. For reading cover to cover, most users still prefer the hard copy. There is no denial, however, that eBooks value is in the quick location of relevant facts and figures as evidenced by the fact that the number of visitors going into Springer resource sites only view on average 2 pages – that is they find what they want and they get out.
Leo Cheung, Open Access Publishing Manager of Springer brought the audience up to speed to the devlopments of Biomed Central (which had been acquired by Springer) and that of Springer Open. Springer is moving into Open Access of published articles with a model that leverage on authors (or their insitutions) to sponsor the publications so that access to these publications become free to users.
Thomas Mager of Springer then explained to the audience the changes that has been done for the launching of a new product called Springer Reference – with the aim of enabling the authors of major reference works the ability to quickly update their contribution to the portion of the major published work without delaying access to relevant and updated information that is often hampered in the phyiscal printing process.
Participants also did a short workshop and brainstorm some ideas on “How to create awareness (of resources) in Librares to Users” which was facilitated by Springer. Feedback on areas for Springer to consider improving upon or provide support had been given to them.
Reported by Yit.