Although each company is creating its own set of research tools, they will all include the functionality for mark-up and annotations, automatic generation of citations and bibliographies and easy access to dictionary definitions. Although Questia, netLibrary and ebrary share the basic concept of providing continuous access to digital information, this is where the similarities stop. On a fundamental level, the business models of each differ radically, particularly in the areas of target markets, pricing schemes and the location or absence of the library within the distribution model. Today, the netLibrary collection contains over 26,000 titles with another 6,000 in production. The range of subjects includes the humanities, social sciences, computer science and business.
Libraries purchase access to the titles on behalf of their patrons.
Each library can tailor their netLibrary collection by selecting a subset of titles from the larger netLibrary collection. The ebooks reside on netLibrary's servers. Access is granted to the appropriate collection based on the user's IP address or login. Pricing schemes vary, but in general, a year's worth of access to a title is equal to the title's list price, plus a yearly adminsitrative subscription cost. Each netLibrary title has been put in escrow with OCLC, so that if netLibrary should fold, a library that has purchased access to a title in perpetuity would receive from OCLC a copy of the ebook file.