Sanborn (2011)

Sanborn, L. D. (2011). eBook collections for high schools. School Library Monthly, 28(1), 37-38. Retrieved November 4, 2011, from Academic Search Complete.

This article compares the products and prices of five commercial venders that provide collections of titles (not one-by-one acquisition) to school libraries.

ACLA Humanities E-books ("best buy")
Ownership or lease: annual subscription
Number of titles: 2,800 at time of writing; 500 more summer 2011
Simultaneous or single user access: Unlimited concurrent users
Collection coverage: history, religion, art, science history, and literature., most published in last 15 years
Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) model availability: Not applicable
Pricing: $450/year
  
Net Library (owned by EBSCO)
Ownership or lease: Permanent ownership; title-by-title selection and collection options
Number of titles: not given
Simultaneous or single user access: Single user access
Collection coverage: various; not specified
Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) model availability: One option of several
Pricing: Sets cost from $1,000 to $5,000 and vary in size from 8 to 50 volumes.
  
Ebrary (part of Proquest)
Ownership or lease: annual subscription
Number of titles: School Edition includes about 7,500 titles
Simultaneous or single user access: Unlimited simultaneous multi-user access
Collection coverage: various; not specified
Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) model availability: Available
Pricing: School Edition costs $2,500/year.

Electronic Book Library (the one chosen by Cushing Academy when the library went digital)
Ownership or lease: title-by-title selection with permanent ownership or PDA model
Number of titles: 150,000+
Simultaneous or single user access: Unlimited simultaneous multi-user access
Collection coverage: not specified
Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) model availability: Available; operates similarly with the system described by Cal State Fullerton
Pricing: One-time set-up fee of $2,000 to $4,000; individual e-book titles are about the same as cloth. 

Overdrive
Ownership or lease: Purchase title-by-title
Number of titles: 300,000
Simultaneous or single user access: depends on publisher
Collection coverage: not specified
Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) model availability: not mentioned, so apparently not
Pricing: Annual fee ranges from $2,000 to $50,000 depending on number of students; half the fee can be applied to purchases

Sanborn notes that Project Muse and JSTOR are both expected to enter this market in 2012, and that she expects they will provide good products.

She says that her own library purchased three subscription packages (ACLS, Netlibrary 9, and ebrary’s School Edition) for the equivalent material that would have taken 6.5 years of her library budget in print. She considers it a bargain.

My thoughts
The author doesn't discuss how students read the ebooks as delivered by the various venders.

She doesn't provide enough info on her particular purchase to convince that it was cost effective. Even if it would take 6.5 years of her budget to acquire the same materials in print, at the end of the 6.5 years she would have the books, and with subscriptions she has nothing. If the entire library is replaced every 6.5 years, then the equal starts to balance out, so it depends on what one computes as the replacement cost and rate for a collection.

The ACLA product looks very reasonable, depending on how much the titles would be used. None of the other options looks particularly attractive for my high school, but that depends to some extent on the titles available. It might be worth the high school librarians thinking about it from a district perspective. But we'd still need to address the e-reader issue.