Chronicle article: An Online Library Struggles to Survive

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

For those who haven't kept up with Questia... of possible interest.  The 
article is quite lengthy and well worth a detour.

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This article is available online at this address:

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i03/03a02701.htm

              - The text of the article is below -

  From the issue dated September 12, 2003

  An Online Library Struggles to Survive

  By ANDREA L. FOSTER

     The for-profit online library Questia opened in January
  2001 with slogans that portrayed  college libraries as
  irrelevant and advertisements that showed desperate students
  turning to Questia for all of their research needs.
  
  Now it's Questia that looks desperate. It has drastically
  shrunk its work force, halted its marketing campaign, and
  closed offices in Los Angeles and New York, leaving only the
  Houston headquarters open. The company also has scaled back
  aspirations for its library collection and expanded its target
  audience to include high-school students.
  
  [SNIP]
  
  The company is hanging on with a humanities and
  social-sciences collection of 45,000 books and 360,000
  articles from journals and periodicals. That's a small
  fraction of what most research libraries have. The libraries
  at Cornell University, for example, contain 7.3 million
  volumes. Even modest-size Carleton College has more than
  481,009 books.
  
  Questia itself is much smaller than its founder and chief
  executive officer, Troy Williams, envisioned. During the heady
  days of the dot-com boom, he talked confidently of having
  750,000 volumes in the online library. He forged ahead with an
  untried business plan, one that depends on selling individual
  subscriptions to high-school students. 
  
  Customers typically opt for the $19.95 monthly subscription,
  which renews itself automatically until it is canceled.
  Quarterly and annual subscriptions are available as well.
  Users also get a variety of student-oriented services, like a
  list of more than 4,000 research topics, and tools to create
  footnotes. Questia woos subscribers with ads on many of its
  Web pages, by claiming that it is "the world's largest online
  library," and by making the text of one book available free:
  Helen Keller's The Story of My Life, published in 1903.
  
  Mr. Williams says Questia is still growing and "more than
  covers its operating costs." But those familiar with the
  company say its downsized ambitions should serve as a reminder
  to entrepreneurs that building an online library for college
  students that fails to win over college librarians and
  scholars is likely to falter. 

  [SNIP - some interesting figures in the Chronicle about 
  relative usage]
  
  Questia.com attracted 517,000 visitors in July, far fewer than
  the 2.7 million at the Web site of Encyclopaedia Britannica,
  for example, according to comScore. Questia ranked last among
  20 research sites in the number of visitors attracted that
  month. 

  [SNIP]
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Copyright 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education