Transcript E-books in academic libraries: lessons learned and new

‘Just in case’ vs. ‘Just in time’:
e-book purchasing models
UKSG Conference
Edinburgh International Conference Centre,
12th-14th April 2010
Outline of session
• Explore the variety of purchasing models currently
available for e-books.
• Advantages and disadvantages of routine title-by-title
purchasing of e-books "just in case“.
• Look at how large publisher and aggregator e-book
packages compare with individual purchases.
• Explore the emerging patron-driven "just in time" model,.
• Case studies taken from a range of suppliers and
libraries, including our own libraries at the Universities of
Leeds and York.
Introduction
• In the UK a small, but significant proportion of library
materials budget is being spent on e-books currently
(around 8-9%).
• Figures for other countries vary.
• Many UK libraries expect this percentage to increase
significantly over the next few years
• Percentage would be higher if content was available
• Only around 8-10% of titles wanted by UK academic
libraries are available as e-books – though this is rising
steadily!
• Academic publishers report e-book sales are increasing.
Consider what you need!
• Number of concurrent users: limited
or unlimited
• Usage: limited or unlimited
• Access in perpetuity, or ‘leased’
• Collections or individual titles
• Value for money going forward
• Who makes the purchasing decisions
Title-by-title purchasing
• Which suppliers? DawsonERA, EBL, ebrary, MyiLibrary
and (increasingly) publishers.
• Ability to tie purchasing into specific local needs.
• E-books can be purchased alongside print from
mainstream book suppliers.
• Paying only for titles requested by academic staff or
students, e.g. reading lists, purchase requests.
• “Just in case” purchasing (similar to print).
DawsonERA
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Over 100,000 titles from 185+ publishers, in all subject areas.
E-books integrated with print copies in supplier’s database.
Perpetual access to purchased titles.
Option to temporarily rent any e-books not yet purchased.
Unlimited concurrent users.
Short term downloading of e-books from the collection is also
possible.
• Reader may print 5% of the book and copy 5% of the text.
• Cap on annual usage for each copy owned.
University of Leeds: print loans
vs. e-book usage
• August 2009-March 2010, purchased 538 DawsonERA
e-books, all of which have been used at least once. Only
419 have been used in print = 77%
(915 DawsonERA e-books by end of 2009 – all have
been used at least once).
• August 2009-March 2010, purchased 281 MyiLibrary ebooks, all of which have been used at least once. Only
111 have been used in print = 40%
(853 MyiLibrary e-books by end of 2009 – all have been
used at least once).
University of York: print loans
Year
purchased
Number
added to
loanable
stock
2005
17,121
2006
13,388
2007
16,594
2008
17,980
Year
purchased
Number
added to
loanable
stock
2005
17,121
2006
13,388
2007
16,594
2008
17,980
Number
borrowed in
2005
6,966
% borrowed
in 2005
40.7%
Number
borrowed in
2006
Number
borrowed in
2007
Number
borrowed in
2008
Number
borrowed in
2009
Number
borrowed by
end 2009
Number not
borrowed by
end 2009
10,821
10,537
10,183
9,775
14,231
2,890
5,834
8,453
8,221
8,012
10,851
2,537
6,036
9,843
9,645
12,177
4,417
7,624
11,730
13,246
4,734
% borrowed
in 2006
% borrowed
in 2007
% borrowed
in 2008
% borrowed
in 2009
% borrowed
by end 2009
% not
borrowed by
end 2009
63.2%
61.5%
59.5%
57.1%
83.1%
16.9%
43.6%
63.1%
61.4%
59.8%
81.1%
18.9%
36.4%
59.3%
58.1%
73.4%
26.6%
42.4%
65.2%
73.7%
26.3%
University of York: e-book
usage, individual title purchases
• 933 titles purchased from MyiLibrary in 2008 and 2009
• During 2009, 907 of these titles were viewed online
(97%)
• Purchasing policies for different subjects:
– always buy e-book when available plus single print
copy
– always buy print, and consult Academic Liaison
Librarian when an e-book is available
University of Leeds: e-book usage
(BR6)
Year
Provider
Usage
2008
MyiLibrary
9,955
2009
MyiLibrary
20,540
2010
MyiLibrary
7,583
2008
DawsonERA
1,055
2009
DawsonERA
5,191
2010
DawsonERA
4,651
to end of March
to end of March
COUNTER usage reports
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The COUNTER Code of Practice for Books and Reference Works, published in March 2006,
provides a number of reports. (See: http://www.projectcounter.org/cop/books/cop_books_ref.pdf)
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Book Report 1: Number of Successful Title Requests by Month and Title (N.B. Book Report
1 is only to be supplied for those titles for which Book Report 2 cannot be provided, i.e. it applies
only to those titles that are available to the customer as a single file.)
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Book Report 2: Number of Successful Section Requests by Month and Title
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Book Report 3: Turnaways by Month and Title
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Book Report 4: Turnaways by Month and Service
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Book Report 5: Total Searches and Sessions by Month and Title (N.B. Book Report 5 is to be
supplied only for those titles where searches and sessions can be counted at the title level. In
most cases searches and sessions are at the level of the service, in which case Book Report 6
applies.)
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Book Report 6: Total Searches and Sessions by Month and Service
Package/collection purchasing
• Which suppliers? – ebrary, EBL,
publishers like T&F, Cambridge University
Press and Wiley-Blackwell
• Advantages – wider variety of titles allows
speculative reading by customers, cost
efficiencies, value-added services
• Disadvantages – similar to print, i.e.
speculative purchasing, many may not be
used.
University of York e-book
usage, packages
• 2 ebrary subject collections (subscriptions)
– Average cost per title in 2009: £0.45
– Average cost per section request in 2009: £0.015
– 41% of available titles viewed in 2009
• Major society publisher, subject-specific collection
– 1966-2009 purchased, one-off payment
– Average cost per section request in 2009: £6.13 – but
this will decrease over time
– 32% of titles viewed in 2009
• Is there a level of usage that justifies outright purchase
rather than a subscription?
E-books in Spanish academic
libraries
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Of the 50 universities, 36 have at least one collection of electronic books.
The largest collections are in the universities of Andalusia, Catalonia and Valencia.
There is a considerable diversity – many universities have subscribed to collections
specializing in literature and in the field of engineering.
The main multi-disciplinary collections purchased are E-libro and NetLibrary.”
“This is a sector that is definitely taking off in Spain and will require progressive
acceptance on the part of the academic community. Librarians have the responsibility
to aid their users in understanding the growing complexity of the information market
and the increasing range of resources available for research. .. when it is borne in
mind that e-books will have a crucial role in the new model for education advocated
by the European Higher Education Area (EHEA).”
E-books in Spanish academic libraries
Luisa Alvite Diez, Blanca Rodriguez Bravo
The electronic library, v.21, no.1, 2009, pp.86-95
E-books at the University of
Bergen
• Early purchases of collections from: NetLibrary, ebrary.
• Also: Gale Virtual Reference Library, Safari,
Encycolpaedia Britannica.
• Did buy individual titles from NetLibrary, but proved too
expensive at the time (2003).
• DRM can put readers off.
• Consortial purchasing of collections via the Norwegian
Archive, Library and Museum Authority (ABM)
• Also now purchasing individual titles through Dawsons.
• Many Norwegian publishers have not embraced e-book
technologies.
Why reconsider purchasing
options?
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Budget cuts i.e. buying less print.
Efficiency exercises i.e. making materials work harder!
Increasing student numbers.
Increased customer expectations of electronic content.
Student fees.
Increasing demand from academics and researchers for
more electronic content.
• Value of buying materials that are not used!
• It is often reported that over half the (printed)
material purchased by academic libraries is
never used by customers (reports from the USA
indicate that in some cases it can be as high as
70%!)
• “As usage plays a key role in determining the
value of electronic products and services, patron
driven acquisition is quickly evolving as a model
of choice…” Leslie Lees, Vice President
(Content Development) for ebrary
Patron-driven purchasing
• What is patron-driven purchasing?
• Advantages – delivery is almost instantaneous
and seamless for customer, “just in time”
purchasing
• Disadvantages – more for library than the
customer; difficult to manage budgets; hard to
know which purchase thresholds are right; often
no choice in purchase thresholds.
What are librarians so afraid of?
Patron-driven purchasing at
York: MyiLibrary
• Trialled with Coutts/MyiLibrary from end May 2009- February 2010
• Set up a deposit account for £25K + VAT
• Identified initial file of 3,003 titles using subject profiles, to be topped
up monthly as new titles released
• Purchase after 2 usages
• MARC records for these titles uploaded into our LMS (Aleph)
• Once a title was purchased, we gave the catalogue record a
different collection code
• Did no publicity at all
• By end February, 433 titles purchased (14% of the total supplied)
Early analysis: MyiLibrary
• 433 titles purchased via Patron Select
– 87 average page views per purchased title (May-Feb)
– £66 Average cost per title purchased, £26 average
per title viewed
– £0.61 Average cost per page view May 09-Feb 10
• 968 MyiLibrary titles purchased via
Library/Academic selection (Jan 08-Feb 10)
– 169 average page views per purchased title during
2009
– £72 Average cost per title purchased
– £0.41 Average cost per page view during 2009
Patron-driven purchasing at
York: Springer
• 3 month test project with no charges (Dec 2009
to Feb 2010)
• All eBook content within the copyright years
2005-2009 opened within our SpringerLink
account (c.12,500 titles)
• MARC records supplied
• Aim is to test the feasibility of a user driven
purchasing model for Springer
Early analysis: Springer
December 2009-February 2010
• Total number of chapter downloads (COUNTER BR2):
8,876
– Computer Science (already purchased collection):
2,750 (31%)
– The 12 pilot collections: 6,162 (69%)
• Total number of titles accessed: 2,855 (880 from
Computer Science; 1,975 from the pilot collections)
• Don’t yet know how that would translate into
collections/copyright years purchased; further work
needed
Elsevier
• Evidence Based Selection Model – new for 2010
• Up-front fee, ranging from 10% to 50% of the
value of the collection(s) chosen, which buys
access to that content for 12 months via Science
Direct platform.
• Library then decides which titles to purchase
and keep in perpetuity, priced up to the value of
the initial content investment, taking usage into
account.
Ebook Library (EBL)
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E-books in all subject areas, but focus is on Science, Technology and
Medicine (STM).
More than 100,000 titles from hundreds of academic publishers.
Non-Linear LendingTM – i.e. multiple-concurrent access, but with limits on
the total number of lending days per year. Also offer unlimited access
model, and Short Term Circulation, a pay-per-use model.
Chapters for Reserve Lending, Course-packs and purchase - Chapters
can be utilised for purchase by students, for reserve lending by libraries, for
inclusion in ePack course-packs.
Patrons can browse all books and utilise full-text search within the browser.
accessed online, eith through EBL's PDF-based reader, or by downloading
Adobe Acrobat ebooks to a PC, laptop or PDA for offline use.
Publisher collections and individual title selection, as well as demand-driven
acquisition.
Patron-driven purchasing in the US
Jason Price and John McDonald (Claremont University Libraries)
presented a paper, “Beguiled by Bananas: a retrospective study of
the usage and breadth of patron vs. library acquired e-book
collections” ,at the Charleston Conference in November 2009.
Key questions:
• Are user-selected e-books used less often than pre-selected ebooks?
No. User-selected e-books are used ≈2-5x more often.
• Do user-selected e-books have a narrower audience?
No. User-selected e-books are used by ≈2-3x more unique users.
• Are user-selected collections less balanced by subject?
No. User selected collections are similarly balanced.
Still more to do!
“The entire world is moving to a market ideal of
getting people what they want or need when
they want or need it. Publishing is only one of
many industries battling the complex strategic
challenge of just-in-time composition of
information or products for delivery to an
empowered individual customer.”
(Mitch Ratcliffe. How to create new reading experiences profitably.
http://booksahead.com/?p=971)
E-books at the University of Utah
“The financial crisis (and attendant budget cuts) have only strengthened ... the feeling that we
must move away from the model that has librarians trying to guess what patrons are going to
want. (Rick Anderson, Assoc.iate Director for Scholarly Resources & Collections)
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Book budget is format-neutral, so e-book purchases are funded in the same way and out of the
same pot of money as print book purchases.
Moving towards making approval plan e-first.
Patron-driven purchasing model with MyiLibrary and NetLibrary.
Library has purchased an Espresso Book Machine to allow print-on-demand.
New LMS (Aleph) and resource discovery tool (Primo).
“This combination of factors will allow the library to make millions of records for digital books
visible to our patrons without either loading those records directly into our catalog or purchasing
copies of any of the books ahead of time; our patrons will have the option of printing them up and
buying them, or (in many cases) printing them on demand and then borrowing them, after which
we will add them to the collection.”
A friendly warning!
“Instead of focussing on books downloadable to
e-readers or smart phones, academic libraries
have created enormous databases of e-books
that students and faculty members can read only
on computer screens. The result … is that these
collections are used almost exclusively for
searching for information – scanning rather than
reading.”
Dan D’Agostino. The strange case of academic libraries and e-books
nobody reads. http://tinyurl.com/y9t6du2
What we want:
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A choice of purchasing models
Multi-concurrent users
Unlimited annual usage
Standardized terms and conditions
Standardized formats
Ability to download to mobile readers
Meaningful usage statistics
Any questions?
Any questions?
• Sarah Thompson
University of York
[email protected]
• Steve Sharp
University of Leeds
[email protected]