Managing Your Future E-Book Collection:
From the Librarian’s P.O.V.
Beth AveryUniversity of North Texas
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.
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