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When I was considering topics for this edition of Being Earnest with Collections, I reached out to a colleague who I have known for some time. Having just left the University of Central Florida after nine years, I am very familiar with the innovation that is coming out of Rollins College. I have collaborated with Jonathan Harwell on other projects and was impressed with his knowledge of cutting edge issues in collection development and discovery. He proposed this article on the various open access initiatives at Rollins College. There is a focus on open access and, in particular, a move toward promoting Open Educational Resources within academic libraries in Florida. One of my last presentations in the state was with Claire Dygert from the Florida Virtual Campus, and our topic was on efforts to reduce the high cost of textbooks based on library efforts to expand in the area of OER and textbook alternatives. When I got my first look at this article I was impressed by the efforts Rollins College has made and how they now serve as emerging leaders in open access. Dr. Jonathan Miller, Jonathan Harwell, and Erin Gallagher have shown that academic libraries of all sizes can play a role in the future of this movement. I hope ATG readers will be as enlightened as I was after reading this article.-MA

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This study applies the method of paratextual analysis to six electronic books, or ebooks, in an academic library collection at a small liberal arts college. Two books are selected from each of three platforms: ebrary, EBSCO, and SpringerLink. The characteristics of each book are described, including design and readership, as well as 2 years of usage statistics from the specific library, and altmetrics where available. The paratextual study leads to a closer investigation of the usage statistics themselves and concludes that despite industry standards, they are not calculated consistently across vendor platforms and that while these data are invisible to researchers outside of the library, there are also essential elements that librarians mistakenly take at face value when comparing ebook usage from multiple vendors.