Sue Polanka posted an interesting item about "print on demand" on her blog No Shelf Required today. University of Pennsylvania Libraries announced that they are involved in a print-on-demand service for public domain books in association with Kirtas Technologies. Customers can place orders with Kirtas for copyright-free books on UPenn's shelves, and have a freshly printed copy mailed to them. In return, UPenn will get high quality e-versions of their own books, plus they get their book back, unhurt.
This sounds nearly ideal for a big academic library. A private company handles all the scanning, order processing, marketing, customer satisfaction, shipping and so on while the library only needs to find and deliver a public domain book. Yes, the company profits from the public effort, but the library also benefits thanks to a (nearly) free outsourcing arrangement that results in a fully searchable, DRM-free ebook collection.
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