Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Library Anywhere Prices (Public!)

Update 6/22/11: When we first launched Library Anywhere, we were eager to have public pricing. It’s certainly a novelty in the library world, where wiggly pricing and negotiation are the norm. And we’ve used public pricing for the past year, keyed off of how many physical buildings/branches the library has. What we’ve found, unfortunately, is that while it pleased many people, it made just as many people unhappy.  We’ve decided that we’re going to reevaluate our pricing metrics, and to take down this public list. And, of course, we’ll maintain pricing that’s far less then similar products!

Labels: library anywhere, librarything for libraries, mobile, mobile web

38 Comments:

  1. fluteflute says:

    Hourly? Daily? Monthly? Yearly? Forever?

  2. Abby says:

    Oops, good catch. I'm updating the post, but it's an annual fee.

  3. Andrew Guidroz II says:

    What about individuals? Are we destined for using the web page forever?

  4. Abby says:

    Andrew—this is a feature for library catalogs, not for LibraryThing catalogs. But working on the mobile version of LibraryThing is indeed on our to-do list.

  5. King Rat says:

    Yeah, they can't offer a mobile LT until they figure out what to do with Amazon data.

  6. Dana says:

    How might pricing work for an online academic library (i.e., one serving distance learning students, with no print collections or building)? Our catalog is just e-books and access would be remotely via a proxy server…

  7. Sara Thompson says:

    Is there a sample mobile URL we could look at, to see how a catalog would look in the Library Anywhere interface? Thanks for doing this!

  8. David says:

    How about special libraries? Non-profit, for-profit, open to the public, closed to the public.

  9. Library Hag says:

    Not to be mean, but geez, people. I think some of you users are a little ballsy. I mean we get LibraryThing really for nothing and you complain? I think it is the best thing ever and enjoy all the enhancements as they have time to get them out. Go Team LibraryThing!!!

  10. Tim says:

    Special libraries cannot buy the product.

    Just kidding. We can't come up with a price list that is both simple and covers everything. (We know there's going to be some questions about just what constitutes a location or building too.) Talk to us. The parameters are pretty clear. If you're a big special library, like about the size of a small college, expect to pay that much. If small, like a public school, you'll pay that.

  11. Barbara says:

    Hats off to you for putting the price out there publicly instead of the "contact us for a very unpleasant experience that you can't mention to anyone." The way deals are made in secret and with non-disclosure expectations violates libraries' interest in transparency, but we put up with it all the time. (scratches head)

  12. Kathleen Cobcroft says:

    Thanks for putting this up!

    I'm surprised by the price difference between colleges and universities – I'm assuming you mean college in the American sense of a place which just offers undergraduate degrees.

    (I'm just whining because my university is mostly involved with undergraduates with relatively fewer higher degrees, which would be the case for a lot of 'universities' internationally. The price isn't that high though.)

  13. dakvid says:

    Do you have to be a LTFL customer for this?

  14. cab says:

    Very exciting! Will be keeping an eye on this. Wish there was tiered pricing, however, to take into account the vast range of library sizes — multi-million dollar annual budgets vs. many, many with budgets < $100k.

  15. Casey Durfee says:

    dakvid: No, you don't have to be an LTFL customer. It's designed to work with just about anything, even systems we can't currently put LTFL inside of.

  16. Anonymous says:

    I'm trying to imagine how our special library users could use Library Anywhere. We have many ebooks/ejournals, access to which is by IP address. Since IP address doesn't apply to their mobile devices–rather their network login on their PCs–would we be unable to offer access to electronic resources on their mobile devices?

  17. Alex Grigg says:

    It kind of depends on how open your catalog is in the first place, I would guess. I work in a corporate library where our main catalog is totally accessible to the public, but the links to online content require either IP access or log ins. So that would probably still work. I don't know if they could make it function if your whole catalog is behind a firewall or something like that.

  18. Justin Spargur says:

    Any update on a release date? "Coming soon" is a bit vague. I've heard April, but that too is vague (and quickly coming to an end). Any update you could give would be great!

  19. Dave says:

    Hi –

    I am very interested in this. We are a SirsiDynix Symphony Consortium of 28 libraries and 37 locations.

    Can you give me some pricing?

    Please contact me at me email address.

    Thanks,

    Dave