Charging for a Digital Library - The Business Model and the Cost Models of theMeDoc ? Digital

MeDoc is a German digital library project bringing together 7 developing institutions and 24 pilot user institutions as well as 12 international publishing houses. MeDoc provides uniform access to a variety of information sources and an information broker service. MeDoc ooers a range of billable digital books and journals contributed by the participating publishing houses. Operating a digital library has not only many technical but also important economical aspects. The contents of a digital library can be regarded as information merchandise just like paper books or journals bought in a book store. In order to encourage publishing houses to contribute their books and journals to digital libraries, suitable business models must be deened. New innovative cost models, like oating licenses or ne grained pay per view, become both necessary and feasible in network based digital libraries. This paper introduces the MeDoc business model and discusses various cost models and their applicability to the services of a digital library. It gives an overview of the MeDoc license and pricing policy and the applied cost models.