eBooks: Key Challenges, Future Possibilities

Charleston SeminarNovember 8, 2014

Michael Levine-ClarkUniversity of Denver

Rebecca SegerOxford University Press

Five Key Challenges

• Developing sustainable, flexible, and predictable models

• Preservation of content• Resource sharing• Course adoption• Future of the monograph

1. Developing sustainable, flexible, and predictable business models• Budget crises - libraries• (Un)predictable revenue – publishers• STL challenges – everyone• Multiple models– Subscription, purchase, DDA (with or without STL)

2. Preservation of Content

• Sustainability of platforms• Long term preservation/access to–Aggregator-hosted ebooks– Leased ebooks–Not-yet-owned ebooks (the DDA pool)

3. Resource Sharing

• Librarians want ILL rights for ebooks–A core value in the print world–eBooks should be more portable than print

books, not less

4. Course Adoption

• Publishers worry about loss of revenue when books normally purchased by dozens or hundreds of students on a campus become available campus-wide as ebooks

• Libraries don’t normally pay for textbooks for students

• Libraries want books in their collections regardless of use in a particular class; publishers want to be able to replicate the course reserve shelf without undermining their additional market

5. The Future of the Scholarly Monograph

• Sustainability – shrinking budgets, shrinking purchases

• New models – STL, DDA, Open Access, what else?

• Allowing this form of scholarship to thrive in a digital world

Future Possibilities

Oh, the possibilities……

Sustainability

• Should libraries pay a fee for DDA that goes to publishers?– An annual fee? A micro charge per title? Some other

factor?– Fees for profiling, record loads?– Fees to support archiving, preservation?– A small fee for browsing?

• Can we experiment with models that vary depending on book type, age, sales projections?

Sustainability

• Publishing long form scholarship ceases in certain disciplines and reduces in others

• Publishers embargo content from STL until costs are recouped

• Experiment with models that vary depending on book type, age, sales projections

Long-Term Preservation

• Dual Hosting:– Aggregator for:• Access across a range of publishers• Management of discovery, DDA process, invoicing

– Publisher for• Post-purchase access

• Collectively, we need to ensure that all published scholarly monographs are preserved in a trusted repository

Long-Term Preservation

• Publishers and Aggregators become “the shelves”

• Hosting content that may or may not be purchased

• Any models for ensuring unpurchased content gets preserved?

Resource Sharing• ILL is a means to an end– More costly, less effective than STL– Perhaps means no access at owning library during

loan

• We should work with publishers to develop an STL model that allows immediate access to everything– Cheaper than ILL– Less staff disruption– Faster delivery to end user

Resource Sharing

• From a author and publisher perspective, replacing ILL with STL was a positive development

• Libraries have asked publishers not to pay until content is used – so we need that use to drive any purchasing

• Would borrowing libraries consider new payment models for ILL of ebooks (assuming lower cost than traditional print ILL)?

Course Adoption

• Allow us full access under a single-user license– Printing, copying, etc.

• Build a system that allows unmediated temporary access during the term– Some additional cost• Based on usage, not on the book being assigned

– Some barriers to usage (read only?)

Course Adoption

• Course adoption is to an extent what sustains unprofitable monograph publishing

• Cooperate on models that work for all parties– restricted access– administration funding as a student benefit

The Future

• Hybrid models?– Content for libraries, bells & whistles for end user

• Library buys the text, user pays for added features• Not really sure I like this idea…

• Put up or shut up– We need to work with publishers to find solutions– Our institutions may need to ante up

• More publisher and library communication – Economics of book publishing; impacts of purchasing models on

ability to publish; effects on academic ecosystem discussed