e-books in academia: surveying the current landscape

e-Books in academia:Surveying the current landscape

Frank CervonePrincipal, Cervone and Associates, LLC

Midwest Collaborative for Library ServiceseBooks & Libraries Series - The Digital Library: Now and Future

June 5, 2013

Some people perceive e-Books in academic libraries as the work of a malevolent force

Image courtesy of morethings.com

Larson, R. R. (1991). The decline of subject searching: Long-term trends and patterns of index use in an online catalog. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42, pp. 197–215. Online at doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199104)42:3<197::AID-ASI6>3.0.CO;2-T

Image courtesy of Chance Agrella

Traditional library usage may be inferred by the amount of searching in catalogs

De Groote, S.L., Hitchcock, K., and McGowan, R. (2007). Trends in reference usage statistics in an academic health science library . Journal of the Medical Library Association, 95(1), pp. 23–30. Online at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1773032/

What is required of libraries is more complex today

It is obvious that libraries need to reinvent themselves if they are to survive

Castillo, M. (2010). Are Libraries an Endangered Species? American Journal of Neuroradiology, 31, pp. 1161-1162. Online at www.ajnr.org/content/31/7/1161.long

Ninety-four percent of academic libraries offer e-Books

33% of school libraries 72% of public libraries

Dilworth, D. (2011). Ninety-four percent of academic libraries offer e-books. Appnewser, February 10, 2011. Online at www.mediabistro.com/appnewser/ninety-four-percent-of-academic-libraries-offer-ebooks_b5878

Data-Planet by Conquest Systems, Inc. (2013). National Center for Education Statistics. Academic Library Statistics: United States: E-Books- Held at End of FY | Country: USA – [Data-file]. Dataset-ID: 017-015-032. Online at www.data-planet.com.

E-Book growth 2002 to 2010

Map of e-Book holdings in academic libraries by state

Data-Planet by Conquest Systems, Inc. (2013). National Center for Education Statistics. Academic Library Statistics: United States: E-Books- Held at End of FY | Country: USA – [Data-file], Dataset-ID: 017-015-032. Online at doi:10.6068/DP13EF6DC808458

Number of e-Books in academic institutions by state

Data-Planet by Conquest Systems, Inc. (2013). National Center for Education Statistics. Academic Library Statistics: United States: E-Books- Held at End of FY | Country: USA – [Data-file], Dataset-ID: 017-015-032. Online at doi:10.6068/DP13EF6D3A1EA55

Top 20 adopting institutions

Data-Planet by Conquest Systems, Inc. (2013). National Center for Education Statistics. Academic Library Statistics: United States: E-Books- Held at End of FY | Country: USA – [Data-file], Dataset-ID: 017-015-032. Online at doi:10.6068/DP13EF6D9C3AA57

Only 12 percent of academic libraries circulate preloadede-reading devices

Polanka, S. (2011). Library Journal Published Library eBook Survey Results. No Shelf Required blog, February 9, 2011. Online at http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/2011/02/09/library-journal-publishes-library-ebook-survey-results-sample-data-here/

Image courtesy of pandodaily

This shouldn’t be too surprising…

• Dedicated e-reader has not reached a point where the technology is worth investing in

• Technology does not match delivery

• Focus on standard computers, PDAs, and other mobile devices

Kiriakova, M., Okamoto, K. S., Zubarev, M., and Gross, G. (2010). Aiming at a Moving Target: Pilot Testing Ebook Readers in an Urban Academic Library. Computers in Libraries, 30(2), 20-24.

Worrying about dedicated e-Readers probably doesn’t matter anyway

Coursey, D. (2012). How Dead Is Amazon's Kindle? Could Be Very Dead. Forbes, April 30, 2012. Online at http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidcoursey/2012/04/30/how-dead-is-amazons-mobile-could-be-very-dead/

Kaufman, L. (2013). Barnes & Noble Weighs Its E-Reader Investment, New York Times, February 24, 2013. Online at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/business/media/barnes-noble-weighs-its-nook-losses.html?_r=0

Image coutresy of wallpaperswide.com

Stereotypes of academic e-Book collections

Computer scienceBusinessReference

Snowhill, L. (2001). E-books and Their Future in Academic Libraries. D-Lib Magazine 7(7/8). Online at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july01/snowhill/07snowhill.html

Disciplines where libraries are most likely to offer e-Books

Polanka, S. (2011). Library Journal Published Library eBook Survey Results. No Shelf Required blog, February 9, 2011. Online at http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/2011/02/09/library-journal-publishes-library-ebook-survey-results-sample-data-here/

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It is difficult to compare the usage of e-Book volumes with printed titles

Cox, J. (2004) E-Books: Challenges and Opportunities. D-Lib Magazine, 10(10). Online at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october04/cox/10cox.html

Courtesy cheekymonokeymedia.com

e-Books are used almost exclusively to scan for information

D’Agostino, D. (2010). The strange case of academic libraries and e-books nobody reads. Teleread, January 7, 2010. Online at http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/the-strange-case-of-academic-libraries-and-e-books-nobody-reads/

Arctic Ground Squirrel image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons: Alan Vernon

Evidence strongly suggests that e-Books are used primarily used for quick fact extraction

“Academic” e-Books, that is

JISC CIBER Team. (2009). JISC national e-books observatory project: Key findings and recommendations. http://issuu.com/carenmilloy/docs/jisc_national_e-books_observatory_final_report

Academic e-Books are not preferred for long form reading (today)

The nature of some courses forces students into using e-Books as they are unable to easily visit the physical library

e-Books are not yet regarded as the main point of information, but are instead seen as an accompaniment to existing resources and are often only used when print copies are unavailable

Brown, L. (2010). Ebooks and the academic library: their usage and effect. Dissertation at Aberystwyth University, http://hdl.handle.net/2160/5954

Image courtesy of The Edmontonian, Brittney Le Blanc

What don’t academic librarians like about e-Books?• Variation in and

complexity of business models for purchasing

• Licensing variety and digital rights management (DRM) restrictions

• Perceived high prices

Vasileiou, M., Hartley, R., and Rowley, J. (2012). Choosing e-books: a perspective from academic libraries, Online Information Review, 36(1), pp.21 - 39

Pricing and business models can be confusing (and odd)

From an anonymous vendor’s sales presentation

Model Access Level Access Period

Purchase 1U, 3U, UU Ongoing

Subscription UU 1 year

Short-term lease 1U 1/7/14/28 days

Large portions of e-Book collections are not used

But then, up to 90% of the traditional reference collection may not be used either

Chrzastwoski, T. E. (2013). Assessing the Value of Ebooks to Academic Libraries and Users. Proceedings of the 9th Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services, 2011, pp. 53-61. Online at http://www.libqual.org/documents/LibQual/publications/2013/9th_Northumbria_Conference_Proceedings.pdf

Bradford, J. T. What's Coming Off the Shelves? A Reference Use Study Analyzing Print Reference Sources Used in a University Library, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 31(6), pp. 546-558. Online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0099133305001163

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However, cost per use can be quite low

In the UIUC study, varied between $0.68 and $1.48

Chrzastwoski, T. E. (2013). Assessing the Value of Ebooks to Academic Libraries and Users. Proceedings of the 9th Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services, 2011, pp. 53-61. Online at http://www.libqual.org/documents/LibQual/publications/2013/9th_Northumbria_Conference_Proceedings.pdf

Revocable Rights

For example, this Simon & Schuster license:

Simon and Schuster grants you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, revocable, non-assignable, and non-transferable license to view, use, and/or play a single copy of the Materials and download one copy of the Materials on any single computer for your personal, non-commercial, home use only

www.simonandschuster.com/about/terms_of_use

Hamaker, C. (2011). Ebooks on Fire: Controversies Surrounding Ebooks in Libraries, Searcher, 19(10). Online at http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/dec11/Hamaker.shtml

Revisions, whether you like it or not

From the Random House license with library resellers:

RH reserves the right, at any time … to replace, edit or modify the contents of any RH eBook.

www.randomhouse.biz/booksellers/pdfs/eBooksLibraryTOS1210.pdf

Hamaker, C. (2011). Ebooks on Fire: Controversies Surrounding Ebooks in Libraries, Searcher, 19(10). Online at http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/dec11/Hamaker.shtml

Confidentiality

Hamaker, C. (2011). Ebooks on Fire: Controversies Surrounding Ebooks in Libraries, Searcher, 19(10). Online at http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/dec11/Hamaker.shtml

Archiving

Image courtesy of maverick2003 on flickr

Yet, we continue to go down the journal pathway

Perpetual licenses - 74% Subscription licenses - 71%

Polanka, S. (2011). Library Journal Published Library eBook Survey Results. No Shelf Required blog. Online at http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/2011/02/09/library-journal-publishes-library-ebook-survey-results-sample-data-here/

But if libraries don’t care, why should the publishers?

Polanka, S. (2011). Library Journal Published Library eBook Survey Results. No Shelf Required blog. Online at http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/2011/02/09/library-journal-publishes-library-ebook-survey-results-sample-data-here/

Courtesy orgmonkey at stripgenerator. Online at http://s3.amazonaws.com/stripgenerator/strip/90/68/14/00/00/full.png

A major trend is the adoption of the platform and not the purchasing decisions of colleges and universities

Dewan, P. (2012). Are books becoming extinct in academic libraries? New Library World, 113(1/2), pp. 27-37.

With the ubiquity of mobile devices, e-Books are expected to replace print volumes

Dewan, P. (2012). Are books becoming extinct in academic libraries? New Library World, 113(1/2), pp. 27-37.

Image from Steve Rhodes used under a Creative Commons license.

Acceptance of e-Books has reached a level where they have become an important library service

Shelbourne, W. A. (2009). E-book usage in an academic library: User attitudes and behaviors. Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services, 33(2–3), pp. 59–72.

There is a need for libraries to raise awareness about the e-Books they offer and how they offer them

Ashcroft, L. (2011). Ebooks in libraries: an overview of the current situation. Library Management, 32(6-7), pp. 398-407.

Q&A

Frank CervonePrincipal, Cervone and Associates, LLC

fcervone@cervone.com