Pay by the Page at E-Library

Ebrary, the new commercial online library, has partnered with the consumer education company Learning Network to create an online "e-library" on business and economics (learningnetwork.ebrary.com ). Other subject areas, such as computers, health, and political science, will be added down the road. "We've got numerous collections that we're building and... we'll be making available at a later date," says ebrary's CEO Christopher Warnock. He envisions high school students using the business and economics database, which contains authoritative nonfiction works. "Not every high school student will choose to use it, but if they conduct research on the Internet, we hope we would have some content they'd be able to use," Warnock notes.

Ebrary patrons can search and browse for free. However, if they want to cut, paste, or copy pages from books or documents, there's a fee of about 25 cents per page. Ebrary shares the profits with its publishing partners, which include Random House, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson. (Pearson owns Learning Network.) Patrons establish accounts using credit cards for as little as $5. While that works well with adults and college students, K–12 schools and kids are another matter. Plans that will enable libraries to pay to make ebrary resources available free to users are in the works.