Demand-Driven E-book Program in Tallinn University of Technology Library: The First Two Years of Experience with the EBL Platform

Kont, Kate‐Riin

doi:10.1080/15228886.2016.1171085

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Although the platform was in testing from April to July 2013, more active usage began, however, only after signing the licence agreement in August of that year. The first book – Principles of Virology – was already bought during the test period on 23 April 2013 (Kont, 2016).…”

Section: General Background Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Once the loan is approved (the patron receives an email), he/she can start reading the book. At the end of the lending period, the reader’s access to the book is automatically disabled (Kont, 2016).…”

Section: General Background Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Still, it seems that librarians should suggest the short-term loan opportunity to patrons instead or before immediately purchasing the item. Often short-term loans are cost-effective and will satisfy the needs of the patron for the information contained in the book (Kont, 2016). However, the popularity of the new eBook models brings more comfortability of usage but also more expenses.…”

Section: General Background Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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To buy or to borrow? Evaluating the cost of an eBook in TalTech library

Kont

2020

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to find out how much the purchasing and lending of individual electronic books really cost. Additionally, this paper investigates which kind of approach would be cheaper and less time-consuming for library staff as well as library patrons – purchase or short-term loan. Design/methodology/approach This study was conducted at the Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) Library. This is the only university library in Estonia where the Ebook Central platform is adapted on a large scale. For background information, all statistical data of expenditures and average prices of purchases and short-term loans during April 2013 and December 2018 were calculated and analysed. Through a case study, the time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) method was used – all activities related to acquisition and lending of eBooks were identified, recorded in detail and analysed. More specifically, the study concerned eBooks offered in the Ebook Central platform and covered purchasing and short-term loan processes, such as receipt of order request, communication with the patron (if necessary) making a purchase or short-term loan, and feedback to the patron. Findings While analysing the results, it appeared there are many additional activities libraries can avoid during the eBook short-term loan process compared to purchasing. As a normality in TalTech library, purchase is always followed by a cataloguing process which increases the time and cost of this process in turn. On the basis of the current study, it can be said that short-term loan is a cheaper way to use eBooks; many activities related to the short-term loan of eBooks take remarkably less staff time and financial resources than eBooks acquisition/purchasing activities. When analysing the literature reviewed as well as collected statistical data, the problem may arise when the decision-maker librarian is not experienced, professional or long-sighted enough to understand the future behaviour of the patron or the usage of the specific eBook. When the usage reaches a certain point, it becomes an indicator of continuing future usage and so it makes sense to purchase the eBook, as the library pays no further charges once an eBook is owned. Originality/value Most studies reviewed by the author are based on the statistical data collected about expenditure, costs, usage, cost-per-use, etc. of short-term loans and purchases. While acquisitions costs, average cost per acquired item per year and cost per usage are easy to identify, it has been difficult to measure associated costs of acquisition, cataloging and circulation. The TDABC methodology seems to be one of the best tools for understanding cost behaviour and refining a cost system for university libraries. Based on the information known to the author, there is no study carried out using the TDABC methodology for analysing costs of eBook programmes.

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Section: General Background Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: General Background Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: General Background Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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To buy or to borrow? Evaluating the cost of an eBook in TalTech library

Kont

2020

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“…Longley 35 explains that the DDA model is more suitable to small academic libraries. Kont 36 too presented a study of successful adoption of DDA model in a technology university library. DDA model's usefulness for academic library is also explained by Peters 37 .…”

Section: E-books Collection Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends in E-book Research

Kumbhar

2018

DJLIT

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The research intended to identify current trends in research on e-books. Specifically it aimed to know the facets of e-books attended to by the research published during 2016. It also intended to review significant results and their supportive or contradictory nature with reference to each other.For this review research literature on e-books was searched from LISA, Emerald, Ebsco, Google Scholar and other databases using the statement ‘e-books OR ebooks’. The query was restricted to journal articles published in English language during January to December 2016. The review finds that the focus of current research on e-books is clearly on usage of e-books. Themes such as e-book collection development and management; search and discovery are also paid more attention to. Usage of e-books by children is emerging as a prominent area of e-book research. Designing of e-books and e-book reading devices are also topics of interest to e-book researchers. Many non-LIS disciplines and professions have interest in researching e-books.

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“…The major challenge would be with ebooks in libraries as not all types of access to them is perpetual. Majority of academic libraries in the U.S. provide them via subscription (79% of libraries) perhaps to be economical (Kont, 2016 ), and then, title by title purchases (75%), demand-driven purchases (49%), upfront purchases (34%), demand-driven short-term loans (18%), ebook approval plans (11%) and combined ebook and print approval plans (10%) (Romano, 2016 ). Thus, regardless of demand for all titles, there are substantially larger number of libraries having access to them.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why does library holding format really matter for book impact assessment?: Modelling the relationship between citations and altmetrics with print and electronic holdings

Maleki

2021

Scientometrics

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Scholarly books are important outputs in some fields and their many publishing formats seem to introduce opportunities to scrutinize their impact. As there is a growing interest in the publisher-enforced massive collection of ebooks in libraries in the past decade, this study examined how this influences the relationship that library print holdings (LPH), library electronic holdings (LEH) and total library holdings (TLH) have with other metrics. As a follow up study to a previous research on OCLC library holdings, the relationship between library holdings and twelve other metrics including Scopus Citations, Google Books (GB) Citations, Goodreads engagements, and Altmetric indicators were examined for 119,794 Scopus-indexed book titles across 26 fields. Present study confirms the weak correlation levels observed between TLH and other indicators in previous studies and contributes additional evidence that print holdings can moderately reflect research, educational and online impact of books consistently more efficient than eholdings and total holdings across fields and over time, except for Mendeley for which eholdings slightly prevailed. Regression models indicated that along with other dimensions, Google Books Citations frequently best explained LPH (in 14 out of 26 fields), whereas Goodreads User counts were weak, but the best predictor of both LEH and TLH (in 15 fields out of 26), suggesting significant association of eholdings with online uptake of books. Overall, findings suggest that inclusion of eholdings overrides the more impactful counts of print holdings in Total Library Holdings metric and therefore undermines the statistical results, whilst print holdings has both statistically and theoretically promising underlying assumptions for prediction of impact of books and shows greater promise than the general Library Holding metric for book impact assessment. Thus, there is a need for a distinction between print and electronic holding counts to be made, otherwise total library holding data need to be interpreted with caution.

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Demand-Driven E-book Program in Tallinn University of Technology Library: The First Two Years of Experience with the EBL Platform

Cited by 6 publications

References 13 publications

To buy or to borrow? Evaluating the cost of an eBook in TalTech library

To buy or to borrow? Evaluating the cost of an eBook in TalTech library

Trends in E-book Research

Why does library holding format really matter for book impact assessment?: Modelling the relationship between citations and altmetrics with print and electronic holdings

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