Managing Your Future E-Book Collection:

From the Librarian’s P.O.V.

Beth AveryUniversity of North Texas

Beth.avery@unt.edu

Acquisitions IssuesAvailability

• Few front list titles – 20-30% usually.• Release time of electronic version delayed,

often more than 60 days.

Acquisitions Issues Costs

• Prices higher than print.• Short term loan costs do not count towards purchase

price, not even a percentage.• Packages “big deals” that we don’t want most of the

content. – No discounts except in packages .– Possible solution agreement to spend x amount of

individually selected titles in one year for y% discount.

Acquisitions IssuesOrdering/Purchasing

• Deduping electronic/print titles.• Contract issues.• Accounting department issues.– Purchasing an unknown future title list.

Acquisitions IssuesResource Sharing

• Sharing issues for consortia. • ILL issues. – Other library may not have appropriate reader– DRM – self destruct after x days.

Acquisitions Issues Reporting/Statistics

• Automatic notification of when access denied frequently so we can purchase additional titles.

• Easy to retrieve, standardized usage statistics reporting.

• Better PDA reporting.– What is rejected.

Cataloging Issues

• Quality Issues– Absent OCLC numbers– Missing call numbers and subjects– Missing 240 field for translations– 776 field issues, example frequency = “a few”– Not using Authority control version of names– Ending 520 field (publisher’s blurb) in mid-

sentence.– Etc.

Access Issues

• Perception that fewer titles are being made available for multiple/unlimited access.

• Missing graphics from electronic version. • Searchability issues – can you do a word

search for entire volume?• Variety of platforms with no standardization.– Navigational issues – forward arrow at top and

bottom of page.

Archiving Issues

• What does “perpetual access” really mean?• Assurance of archiving of earlier editions.• Lack of archiving puts scholarly publishing at

risk.

Future Issues

• Interfacing with discovery services and tools such as citation managers, embeded dictionaries, etc.

• Developing metrics for assessing ebook vendors and publishers.

• Studies of ebook platform usability. • Now is the time to work with vendors and

publishers to resolve issues.

EQUACCALA's Presidential Task Force on Equitable

Access to Electronic Content A website, www.equacc.ala.org, was launched on March 28 inviting commentary on the task force’s work in five areas: 1) issues, trends and education on providing accessible content to people with disabilities; 2) building more support and awareness that libraries play an essential role in the e-content world; 3) model projects, including case studies of libraries trying different models for providing accessible content; 4) understanding the existing market and future trends through an environmental scan; and 5) licensing, including the exploration of new and emerging business models for obtaining content from authors, publishers and vendors.