Necessity is still the mother of invention, and physical processing is a reality for most libraries. Ergo, the inevitable development of Indigo Media and its innovative MediaPrint software, which allows distributors to overlay customized labels, logos, barcodes, and artwork onto retail labels of audiobooks, CDs, VHS tapes, DVDs, and CD-ROMs, on a library-by-library basis. The resulting product is much cleaner and neater and ready to go straight to the shelves without labor-intensive cutting and pasting. The company's clients already include Books on Tape, OCLC, Brodart, Junior Library Guild, Crimson Multimedia, and BWI, with more deals in the works. Tim Allen, president of Indigo Media, was working with Crimson Multimedia in 1995 when he met with Christine Britch, acquisitions librarian at Salt Lake County Library System, who said she wanted to buy CD-ROMs from Crimson but dreaded processing them. Britch asked Crimson to help process the products, and Allen had his first taste of what librarians face: "It was mind-numbing trying to match boxes with adhesive stickers while cutting up retail boxes with Exacto knives so that we could reuse the graphics. The finished product was not very attractive. It took about six months of doing it 'the hard way' before I started seeing how I could use my software background to make the job not only easier but much, much better." Thrilled librarians brought Crimson to the forefront of the CD-ROM library market, with 25 percent of its profits from processing alone by 2000. In 2003, Crimson Multimedia was sold to Thomas Klise Company, and Indigo Media was born for the sole purpose of selling this physical processing solution to vendors serving the library market. As the first and only company with a software application addressing physical processing, Indigo Media initially faced little demand. "It's interesting that when you create a better mousetrap, you still need to create demand for that mousetrap before you can sell the first one," Allen muses. Calling the 100 largest libraries in the United States and sending them samples helped Indigo Media raise its profile. Many librarians asked for a direct sell, but Indigo Media processing works from the other end, so the only way to get it is to call distributors and publishers and ask for it. Books on Tape (BOT) was the first to listen to those calls. "BOT's clients were speechless at the new capability. It was a huge success," says Allen. Jean George, director of New Business Development at BOT, elaborates: "Libraries have been very receptive to this program, especially when dealing with opening-day collections and multiple branch locations. A library can order the same copy of a book for each branch, and we can put the individual branch information on each title. Since the information is digitally printed, we maintain the highest consistency and standards of processing." As for Allen's thoughts on the impending digital age: "I am watching the download market with much curiosity. But just in case, we have just finished developing our software for use with books!"

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Ann Kim is Special Projects Coordinator, LJ