1. Ever Evolving Ebooks
SANLiC Keynote 2013-05
Jason Price, PhD
Interim Director, Claremont Colleges Library
E-resource Consultant, Statewide Calif Electronic Lib
Consortium

2. My Background
Researcher & Teacher 1994-2003
Ecology & Evolution PhD
Masters in Library Science
Library & consortium 2004-2013
Claremont Colleges Library – 7500 FTE
Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium
100 private academic & research institutions
E-resource Analyst / Consultant
FMI/Papers & Slides
http://visualcv.com/lpq4t1s

3. 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

4. Preferred formats for scholarly
monograph use (2013 Claremont Local
Ithaka Faculty Survey)

5. Portrait of Discoverability:
Ebooks exist in a maze with many dead
ends
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/492940

6. 2013 Claremont Local Ithaka Faculty Survey:
Where do you start your academic research?

7. Claremont Colleges Library
http://claremont.summon.serialssolutions.com/ Try it
out!
A Google alternative?
What’s missing?
Discovery
tool…

8. Claremont Colleges Library
Definitions!
E-Reference…

9. Does the library have them? Yes, but you have to go to a silo…
E-reference Silos…

10. Discovery: Librarian Role 1
Work with vendors to ensure e-reference content is
discoverable (if we are to continue to spend money
on it)

11. Known
item
search…
Chapter link –
Freely Available
Link to purchase
book from
publisher
Link to Google
books preview
Links to
purchase book
from Amazon

12. Another known item
search…

14. Claremont Colleges Library
No ebook?!?

16. Claremont Colleges Library

17. Discovery within a book… and from a book(?)
Claremont Colleges Library

18. The (e)book access
maze…
X
X
X
X
???
X

19. Discovery: Librarian Role 2
Ebook 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

20. Portrait of future ebook
discoverability?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tojosan/181248771/

21. General Platform characteristics
Aspect 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

22. ‘Portrait’ of Platform Coverage, then &
now
http://goo.gl/aFPUX

23. Key aggregator platform
characteristics
Characteristic EBL Ebrary Ebsc
o
MyILibrar
y
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 ? ?

24. Librarian role: aggregator
platforms
Create sophisticated title by title platform purchasing
preferences for your library
Based on digital rights restrictions
Publisher before Aggregator
Based on simultaneous use
EBL* 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

25. 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

26. Acquisition model highlights
(1)
The case for
aggregator subscription collections

30. 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…

31. Acquisition model highlights
(2)The case for demand driven acquisition
EBASS 25 PDA purchasing model video 1:40
5 Mixed-model libraries
Design
Test variables: Purchase type & Library
Response 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

33. Librarian Acquired

36. User-selected collections have
fewer unused titles
1.7%
10.0%
3.5%
9.7%
4.2%
5.9%
2.5%
2.0%
0.3%
6.3%
0.0%
2.0%
4.0%
6.0%
8.0%
10.0%
12.0%
USER PRE USER PRE USER PRE USER PRE USER PRE
A B E I K
%ofbooksunused
Library and Purchase (Selection) Type

37. 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

38. Librarian Role: Let
researchers drive the
collection!

39. The dark side of PDA
For publishers & thereby for authors
Disrupts 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

40. http://readersbillofrights.info

41. 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

42. 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 wehttp://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0012.103

43. 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

44. Ebook ILL – 2 camps
Ownership – 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

45. 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

46. Consortial Sharing
Shared Collection model
Based 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

47. One vision of the future
Maintaining 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

48. There and Back again

49. Questions?
http://visualcv.com/lpq4t1s