Employing Usage Data to Plan for an E-book Collection

Abstract

The authors are grateful to YBP and Coutts for their assistance in data gathering. R ecently, libraries-particularly academic libraries-have been grappling with issues surrounding e-book acquisitions and collection development. Starting as bundled packages with rather restrictive lending models as first promoted by NetLibrary in the late 1990s, e-books have become more patron-friendly through flexible lending arrangements and have become more acquisitions-friendly through single-title offerings. The authors created a research method to identify local users' needs and explored how well currently available e-book content might meet those needs. Using circulation records, interlibrary loan (ILL) requests, and in-houseIn contrast to their swift adoption of e-journals, academic libraries were slow to integrate e-books into the library collections. Barriers to e-book acceptance included libraries' and users' initial unfamiliarity with e-books, slow standardization of e-book technical platforms, lack of a sustainable e-book purchasing model, uncertain circulation policies, and limited discovery and delivery options. Despite these hurdles, the development of e-book collections has emerged as a growing trend among libraries because the new medium provides "added functionality over print versions." 2 This added functionality includes constant availability, remote access, and full-text searching. E-books require no shelf space or reshelving. They can never be lost, stolen, damaged, or overdue. 3In the late 2000s, a breakthrough in creating a viable e-book purchase model became one important motivation for libraries to develop large-scale e-book collections. Print book vendors, working with publishers and e-books aggregators, began to incorporate e-books into their ordering databases. This was a

Academic E-Books : Publishers, Librarians, and Users

“…Pomerantz (2010) compared the print monographs that her library acquired in nursing and business to equivalent electronic editions available from aggregators and found that only 31% of the library-profiled books in these subjects had electronic counterparts. Link, Tosaka, and Weng (2012) concluded that fewer than 25% of locally checked out or interlibrary loan-requested print books were also available in e-format.…”

“…In other words, if a desired title is available both in print and electronic at YBP, librarians should order the e-edition. The psychology librarian will need to continue buying print books for those titles where a print copy is the only choice-because even if an electronic version may be available elsewhere, the licensing and platform restrictions often prohibit the library from purchasing e-books outside YBP (Polanka, 2011).…”

La adquisición de "ebooks" en una biblioteca universitaria puertorriqueña: condiciones de uso y preferencias de los usuarios

“…Según estos resultados, los ebooks aún están en la etapa de suplementar a los libros impresos y el mercado del libro digital todavía es incierto e inestable. Por una parte, las editoriales deben considerar el timing de la publicación de sus libros en formato digital; por otra, los distribuidores deben esperar a que las editoriales les permitan comercializarlos (Link, Tosaka y Weng, 2012).…”