Many publishers lack an understanding of the library market, which is divided into very separate market segments which share the same name, but have distinctly different funding, buying and usage patterns. Public libraries have to meet the needs of their communities, academic libraries build collections for their students and faculty, but corporate libraries have to consistently prove value to their businesses. All face the problem of getting adequate funding, though for different reasons.

Jean Bedord, Shore Communications, an adjunct faculty member in the Library school at San Jose State University described the unique King Library, which combines both the main branch of the San Jose public library and the academic library for the university. The evolution of the digital library comes in different flavor--for King library, this means 400 public access computers and 500 laptop computer ports in the library itself for a very wired student body and public--a major change in the last 10 years. It also means access to electronic resources and databases 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as compared to the 81 hours a week that the physical building is open.

Corporate libraries face different challenges in providing value to their internal clients in order to continue getting funding. Valerie Ryder represented Air Products, a products manufacturer, and Denise Dodd represented Independence Blue Cross, a service provider for health care claims. Both of them are buying more electronic content than in the past, but face significant hurdles in doing so. Print products don't require license agreements, and are fixed price for unlimited use, though limited to physical buildings and routing slips. By contrast, license agreements have to be reviewed by legal, rights have to include contractors and intermediaries, browsers and plug-ins must comply with IT standards, usage reports must be available, and the publisher must pass purchasing department guidelines for reputation and risk. And in addition, to this, different access options are needed: transparent IP authentication in the case of Air Products, and user id's and passwords for Independence Blue Cross.

And finally, there is the sticky issue of pricing, and a plethora of different publisher pricing models, which may not relate to the reality of the actual number of users of the information. Though a corporation may have thousands of employees, it may only be a 20 person chemistry department that uses a specific database. Print products are still purchased, and may in fact be more flexible, than electronic products limited so specific users, rather than available on an as needed basis. And if the electronic product is priced unreasonably higher than the print product, the information center will continue with the best value that meets their business needs. For academic and public libraries, the same issues arise and frequently a consortia handles the negotiations for a group of libraries. Successful selling into this market means adapting to library needs as customers rapidly adopting new technologies, not clinging to existing print business models!