FEATURE


E-books


is to purchase e-books as part of consortia. ‘Consortia such as the Indian National Digital Library in Engineering Science and Technology (INDEST) and Developing Library Network (DELNET) provide access to numerous e-book titles at discounted rates,’ Satyanesan noted.


E-book usage


Usage of e-books is an important consideration for librarians. Bucknell noted that discovery plays a key role in this. ‘Since we’ve launched our discovery service, journal usage has increased moderately but e-book usage has increased drastically,’ he said. ‘In the past, students went to known books that they found in library catalogues. With the discovery service, they are finding other things. However, there is still a long way to go to make book content as discoverable as journal content.’ ‘Many e-books are used much more than print counterparts,’


their noted England.


‘We have e-books in the collection that were downloaded more than 200 times in the past year. No print book could circulate that number of times. DDA programme purchases have to be


‘There is still the notion of print books being the most credible source, so people read the e-book


but cite the print book’ Verena Weigert, programme manager


used in order to trigger an acquisition, whereas many acquired print books never circulate.’ He also observed that print collections are not growing as fast as they used to. However, a challenge with moving from print to electronic that England has noticed is that ‘some publishers or providers of e-books do not provide all the usage statistics or complete bibliographic records. For example, our budget allocation formulas are more difficult to compute just because some providers of e-books do not assign call numbers to the e-books. One of the factors we look at in allocating book budgets is circulation or use within a subject. It takes more work to accurately assign usage statistics to the correct subject area when call numbers are not assigned. ‘With regard to demand driven acquisition programmes, one challenge is which unused book records to remove from the programme and when the records for unused books are removed. We are developing deselection profiles to govern these decisions, but I believe


14 Research Information APR/MAY 2013


some libraries are removing all unused books after a year or two and some are not removing any titles.’ Verena Weigert, programme manager research information and responsible for the Jisc report, noted another challenge with e-book usage: ‘There is discussion around student attitudes to e-books and what they see as credible. There is still very much the notion of print books being the most credible source, so people read the e-book but cite the print book.’ Her colleague, Showers, agreed: ‘There’s a question of how you demonstrate impact if people are using e but citing p. Students like e-books because they can access them anywhere at any time but when it comes to writing they are still in hybrid mode. They can only have so many e-books open at once and still tend to spread print books around them on their desks.’ He continued:


‘E-books are still very


traditional and print-like. They haven’t fully exploited multimedia. However, students are also still restricted and restrained by what they are required to do on their courses.’


Collection building


There are challenges in collection building too, said Bucknell; in particular, the need to ensure that students find and use the latest versions of a book – a harder task than simply replacing one version with a newer one on the shelf. ‘In things like medicine or law, old books can be unhelpful and even dangerous,’ he explained. ‘The library has to either remove older versions from the discovery service themselves or ask the publisher to remove them. It is hard to do this on a systematic basis, especially as authors and ISBNs change and there are so many more books to keep track of when they are bought in packages.’


On the flip side, long-term preservation of e-books is very important to librarians. ‘We do want publishers to use the likes of LOCKSS, CLOCKSS and Portico and for libraries to have access to them in long term,’ said Bucknell. Jadhav noted some of the challenges: ‘The multiplicity of e-book file formats poses serious difficulties for both cross-platform compatibility and long-term access. The preservation of e-books is especially difficult because it requires the long-term maintenance of several distinct elements: texts, file formats, software, operating systems, and hardware,’ he said.


Showers agreed: ‘Preservation of e-journals is


only something that we’re now trying to address in a big way and e-journals are much more mature. As with journals, the whole issue of preservation is a complex and neglected thing.


What some of the research says


l The ‘2012 Survey of E-book Usage in U.S. Academic Libraries’, conducted by Library Journal, found that nearly one third of academic libraries have adopted patron-driven acquisitions models. www.thedigitalshift.com/research/ e-book-usage-reports/academic


l A Pluggd.in survey of e-books in India found that 45 per cent of respondents prefer physical copies only, 20 per cent prefer e-books only and 35 per cent would switch from physical to e-book versions if major discounts were provided. www.nextbigwhat.com/will-indians- buy-ebooks-or-physical-editions-297


l The Jisc-commissioned research, led by Ken Chad Consulting, ‘The challenge of ebooks in academic institutions: Creation, Curation and Consumption’ is ongoing at the time of going to press, but already includes several case studies. ebookchallenge.org.uk Jisc-funded


l Another study, ‘E-Books


and Consortial Purchasing: Benefits & Challenges’ carried out by Royal Holloway, UK, has looked at the advantages


and disadvantages


of different PDA approaches. ebass25.rhul.ac.uk


Who takes responsibility? Are libraries going to trust publishers?’ He also said preservation initiatives can struggle as budgets are cut.


Librarian role


E-books could change the role of libraries too. Showers noted that libraries are playing more of a role in the creation of this type of content and aggregating their own types of e-book. He pointed to work by the UK’s Open University in turning distance-learning course material into multimedia-rich e-books: ‘Libraries have a role as publishers. Rather than just buying content, they are disseminating it. This starts to impact on how things like course notes are created in the first place. That will be interesting as MOOCs (massive online open courses) evolve. And university libraries becoming involved in content creation could have impacts on the role of institutional repositories and implications for university presses.


E-books may be clear parts of library plans but discussions about them are not yet over.


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