Ever Evolving EbooksSANLiC Keynote 2013-05Jason Price, PhDInterim Director, Claremont Colleges LibraryE-resource Consultant, Statewide Calif Electronic Lib Consortium

My BackgroundResearcher & Teacher 1994-2003

Ecology & Evolution PhD

Masters in Library Science

Library & consortium 2004-2013

Claremont Colleges Library – 7500 FTE

Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium100 private academic & research institutionsE-resource Analyst / Consultant

FMI/Papers & Slideshttp://visualcv.com/lpq4t1s

Panorama of Ever Evolving Ebooks

Discoverability

E-book Platform Characteristics

Acquisition Model highlights

Impact on scholarly communication

Digital rights management (DRM)

ILL & Consortial Sharing

One potential vision of the future

Preferred formats for scholarly monograph use (2013 Claremont

Local Ithaka Faculty Survey)

Portrait of Discoverability: Ebooks exist in a maze with many dead ends

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/492940

2013 Claremont Local Ithaka Faculty Survey: Where do you start your academic research?

Claremont Colleges Library

http://claremont.summon.serialssolutions.com/ Try it out!

A Google alternative?What’s missing?

Discovery tool…

Claremont Colleges Library

Definitions!

E-Reference…

Does the library have them? Yes, but you have to go to a silo…

E-reference Silos…

Discovery: Librarian Role 1

Work with vendors to ensure e-reference content is discoverable (if we are to continue to spend money on it)

Known item search…

Chapter link – Freely Available

Link to purchase book from publisher

Link to Google books preview

Links to purchase book from Amazon

Another known item search…

Claremont Colleges Library

No ebook?!?

Claremont Colleges Library

Discovery within a book… and from a book(?)

Claremont Colleges Library

The (e)book access maze…

X

X

X

X

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X

Discovery: Librarian Role 2Ebook usability is not just about aggregator and publisher platforms…

They’ve got to find the book first!

Can’t continue to depend (solely on the OPAC)

Libraries & Librarians need to invest in simplifying the ebook maze that confronts researchers

Eliminate dead ends

Reduce redundant links

Encourage through instruction until it works well enough that they can do it on their own

Portrait of future ebook discoverability?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tojosan/181248771/

General Platform characteristicsAspect Publisher Aggregator

Simultaneous use (+) Common (-) Varies

Chapter PDF download

(+) Easy/Unrestricted

(-) Difficult/Restricted

Book PDF Download (-) Not possible (-) Only w/ DRM software

Discoverability (-) Limited from outside

(-) Limited from outside

Content archive/portability

(-) Limited (-) Very limited

Full text search (-) Limited (+) Sophisticated

Interface sophistication

(-) Lower (+) Higher

Title by title purchasing

(-) Unavailable / Difficult

(+) ‘Seamless’

Content coverage (-) Narrow but growing

(+) Broad but patchy

‘Portrait’ of Platform Coverage, then & now

http://goo.gl/aFPUX

Key aggregator platform characteristics

Characteristic EBL Ebrary Ebsco

MyILibrary

Unlimited Download of purchased book chapters N N N N

Affordable simultaneous use Y N N N

Has subscribed collection N Y Y N

Demand Driven Acquisition Y Y Y Y

Short term lease program Y Y ? ?

Librarian role: aggregator platforms

Create sophisticated title by title platform purchasing preferences for your library

Based on digital rights restrictionsPublisher before Aggregator

Based on simultaneous useEBL* before Ebrary, Ebsco, or MyILibrary

Based on critical mass through subscribed collections

Ebrary and Ebsco before EBL* or MyILibrary

FMI: Platform Choice: Policies & Perspectives http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/1288284314947

Portrait of 5 acquisition model dimensions

Platform: Aggregator vs. Publisher

Selection type: Library selected vs. Agent profiled vs. PDA vs. Publisher collection

Unit: Individual vs. Fixed package vs. Variable package

Duration of access: Ownership vs. Annual Lease vs. Short Term Lease vs. Chapter Pay Per View

Simultaneous users: One, Three, Unlimited, Non-Linear Lending

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:4dSphere.jpg

Acquisition model highlights (1)

The case for aggregator subscription collections

Subscription cost less than a penny on the dollar per year!

Subscribable Ebrary Ebooks = 77,482 purchase price 51,960,186 R (single-user price)

± 30 R/FTE… so for 15000 fte = 450000 R/year

% of list price per year = 0.87% (multi-user price)

Years to buy = 100+ years! Ebsco subscription pricing is similar…

If you are investing in aggregator ebooks, you should seriously consider acquiring both subscription packages, and avoid buying individual books that are (or will be!) available by subscription…

Acquisition model highlights (2)

The case for demand driven acquisition

EBASS 25 PDA purchasing model video 1:40

5 Mixed-model libraries

DesignTest variables: Purchase type & LibraryResponse variables:

Uses per year

Unique users per year

Books owned more than 6 months

Inferential stats: Negative binomial regression (not shown), ANOVA

Price & McDonald 2011 http://goo.gl/RIuKt

Librarian Acquired

User-selected collections have fewer unused titles

US

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PR

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US

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PR

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US

ER

PR

E

US

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PR

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US

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PR

E

A B E I K

0.0%

2.0%

4.0%

6.0%

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10.0%

12.0%

1.7%

10.0%

3.5%

9.7%

4.2%

5.9%

2.5%2.0%

0.3%

6.3%

Library and Purchase (Selection) Type

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Acquisition model highlights (3)

PDA through evidence based selection

EBASS 25 PDA purchasing model video 6:50

All the advantages of PDA on the (DRM free) publisher platform

Librarian Role: Let researchers drive the

collection!

The dark side of PDA

For publishers & thereby for authorsDisrupts predictability of book sales formerly supported by autoship approval plans (which make little sense in a PDA world)

Increases perceived risk of publishing a book

Feeds the scholarly monograph crisis by increasing the likelihood of publishing a book that won’t sell

Increases the potential threat to university presses

http://readersbillofrights.info

The course adopted book dilemma

The need to preserve income from course adopted books drives simultaneous use restrictions

For university presses≥50% of income comes from ≤10% of the books

Publishers hold back this content from ebook subscription collections (even their own) and won’t sell unlimited access to these titles

If University presses are to relax these limitations, they’ll need a better model for paying for course adoption

Scholarly Communication: The bigger perspective

For while much of the concern today over the monograph has to do with the economic consequences for university presses, it is what the monograph means for scholarship that surely matters. The monograph provides researchers with the finest of stages for sustained and comprehensive—sometimes exhaustive and definitive—acts of scholarly inquiry. A monograph is what it means to work out an argument in full, to marshal all the relevant evidence, to provide a complete account of consequences and implications, as well as counter arguments and criticisms. It might well seem—to risk a little hyperbole—that if the current academic climate fails to encourage scholars and researchers to turn to this particular device for thinking through a subject in full, it reduces the extent and coherence of what we know of the world. (Willinsky 2009 JEP 12:1)

http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0012.103

More bluntly, from Clifford Lynch

Just because the existing scholarly publishing system has served the academy fairly well in the past does not mean that it has an intrinsic right to continue to exist in perpetuity. It should not, and must not, become a barrier to our aspirations and our innovations. If the day has come when the scholarly publishing system impedes scholarship, teaching, and learning it should—indeed must—be replaced by a new and more responsive system.”

Lynch 2006. ARL: a bimonthly report 248 October.

http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/arlbr248sixpoints.pdf

Ebook ILL – 2 campsOwnership – just in case

See ebook ILL as a crucial part of future of ebook access

Prefer that libraries serve as content providers

Inherently support simultaneous use restrictions

The Occam’s reader effort

Access – just in time Suggest that publisher transaction fees can replace ILL for ebooks

shift ILL labor costs to pay publisher transaction fees

Allows for reduction in simultaneous use restrictions, necessary for true ILL

Ebrary’s initiative

Librarian’s role: Increase ILL request sophistication

I believe that the immediate future should support both models

When single chapters are needed, publisher pay per view access is optimal

When the whole book is needed we will still need to support some form of whole book access

For efficiency and cost savings: our ILL request mechanisms will need to increase in sophistication

Consortial Sharing

Shared Collection modelBased on preservation of current revenue

Price for consortia wide ownership is based on the average number of books purchased from the publisher by all members of the consortium

Can be for Consortial PDA, Fixed collections, etc.

Could help to reduce need for ILL, but requires major budget sharing

One vision of the futureMaintaining our core role: Preservation of the scholarly record

Ebook access is highly demand driven, ownership is limited to those who can afford it

For content with appropriate rights, print on demand is a popular supplement to ebook access

Regional repositories allow sharing of print books on a Netflix DVD model, some copies are non-circulating for preservation sake

There and Back again

Questions?

http://visualcv.com/lpq4t1s