OhioLINK viewpoint: Consortium Electronic Book Licenses – it’s Just a Serial

1. OhioLINK viewpoint:Consortium Electronic Book Licenses – it’s Just a Serial Common Licensing Expectations and Techniques for E-Book Publishers or E-book Aggregators learned from E-Journals

2. E-Journal Licensing Lessons for E-books • There is only one budget for both electronic and print book formats • Must reflect dramatic increase in content and access per monetary unit spent • Must be a more economically sustainable model • Must reflect needs for perpetual access, archiving, preservation • Must complement Inter-library loan systems • Must focus on current and future content • Conclusion – “Big Deal” works as a strategic approach to e-book licenses

3. Requirements for E-book Publishers • Comprehensive, predictable scope of titles • Electronic version concurrent with print • Separate the back list from front list • Pricing accounts for E-book collection plus expected print copies – in combination • Pricing is a reasonable extrapolation of historical group annual unit and spending levels for a comparable scope of titles – see next slide • Pricing includes additional discounts on print prices • OhioLINK can locally load

4. E-book publisher pricing examples

5. E-books are like Journals because… • The number of books produced each year by publishers is often very stable • The number of books bought by a group each year is often very stable - as measured by percent of produced books and copies bought per title • At the very minimum, there are often stable levels and trends which can be used to estimate future behavior • Measuring multi-year book histories is like measuring current journal subscriptions

6. Determining a Group License Price Part 1 • Measure annual print purchase history - at least 5 years for a comparable scope of titles • Book holdings - titles and copies by school • Copies/title • Percent of titles produced that are bought by the consortium • Consortium cost at net price per title • Extrapolate purchase history trends to determine future “Status Quo” expected value of the group’s print business with book publisher

7. Determining a Group License Price Part 2 3. Create Group License Potential Cost Matrix – including both electronic and print • Range of potential group electronic license prices • Range of potential print purchase levels below the expected value of Status Quo print levels at expected discounted print prices 4. Negotiate to reasonable, sustainable win-win multi-year agreement 5. Divide electronic Group license fee among members based on shares of purchase history

8. Example – Publisher #1Yearly values indexed to Annual Maximum

9. Example – Publisher #2The Status Quo Projection

10. Example Publisher #2 - Group License Potential Cost Matrix – includes both electronic and print

11. Net Result of this Approach • Strategic objectives met – consistent with journals and other types of materials • Expected total cost is realistic and controlled • Easy to regulate if units and budgets get out of balance • Healthier for publishers – status quo trends show unit declines • Reductions can be made to total print copies across the consortium – shelf space saved • Access is dramatically increased via e-books

12. OhioLINK Status with E-books #1 • NetLibrary – several evolving models – now inactive with +15,000 titles • Safari Tech books – annual subscription only • Oxford Reference Online Premium – annual subscription only • 15 Chadwyck-Healey American/English Literature Collections – perpetual licenses • ARTFL – French Literature – annual subscription

13. OhioLINK Status with E-books #2 Perpetual Licenses with local load directly with Publishers • ABC-CLIO Reference • Oxford Scholarship Online • Oxford Digital Reference Shelf • Sage Reference • Gale Virtual Reference Shelf – their controlled imprints • Springer • Others in Negotiation

14. Questions?? tom@ohiolink.edu