ebook collection development

@ Judge Business School

Andy Priestner, March 2012

policy

policy

1. Check if an ebook is available before purchasing a printed book (generally Dawsonera)

2. Check the ERDB and elsewhere3. If ebook is available, only purchase an

additional printed book if the item is cited on a reading list as an ‘essential text’ or ‘essential reading’

4. Let ebooks administrator know

statistics

statistics

Currently 562 ebooks in business & management

Oxford: 263Dawsonera: 119*MyiLibrary: 106InTech (free): 32ACLS: 20EBSCO (formerly NetLibrary): 15Cambridge: 5Miscellaneous: 5*

*purchased direct from Judge I&LS budget

statistics

Usage figures for Dawsonera titles (2009 – present)

statistics

ebook expenditure and no of titles purchased (dera)

statistics

Overall expenditure 2011-12

printed books: £8.5kebooks: £4.3k (incl. ebooks@cambridge contribution)

statistics

% of books ‘in high demand’ available as ebooks

No of books in high demand: 75• Available as ebooks: 23• Available printed only: 52

31%96% of these e-books were individually purchased from Dawsonera (so big packages are not a solution)

survey results

survey results

Do you use ebooks?

• 2010-11: 74% yes• 2011-12: 61% yes

Positives and negatives:

Negatives

Positives

survey results

Qualitative responses• ‘Why don’t you just make all your books available as ebooks?’

• ‘I can only download up to 10 pages at a time, which is a pain as you have to be logged in to read’

• ‘Range of ebooks is poor. Few of the required MPhil titles available’

• ‘Some only give you permission to read them for a day, and you need to be online to access them’

• ‘Not practical if you want to read the book on a train’

• ‘Better when using just to look up a couple of things, but when it's to read extensively, and retain information, I find them far more difficult to use than print books’

• ‘Would use them more if I had an iPad’

• ‘Although books become heavy if you have to carry a number round, they are still more portable in some respects’

• ‘I access everything remotely so ebooks are vital for me’

access

access

“I find it very confusing. I have no idea where I’m meant to go to access ebooks!”

access

Different avenues and platforms

devices

devices

• We can’t offer ebooks on Kindle

• We’re not in a position to (and don’t wish to) lend out iPads and/or Kindles

• Few people want to read an ebook off a smartphone

the future

the future

• All new textbooks will be available electronically but publishers will increase prices to ensure they receive the same level of revenue as when they sold print and electronic (regardless of cheaper production costs)

• Ebooks will be a pastiche of audio and video not just text.

• Only best-selling books will be published in printed form (i.e. few academic texts), however, libraries will still stock printed books that publishers (or others) do not consider worth digitising.

• Physical libraries will be more about learning spaces and desking rather than books and bookshelves.

• By the year 200,000, platforms and access will have become irrelevant as we will all be able to instantly read books through special ports in our foreheads