User/Patron Driven Ebook Collection Development

1. User/Patron Driven Ebook Collection Development • Tony Ferguson, Gayle Chan, and Janny Lai • University of Hong Kong Libraries http://www.thelessonfilm.com/images/student_driver.jpg

2. What is user-driven ebook collection development? A library or consortia buys only those books which readers read, not those which someone else thinks they will want to read.

3. Motivation for Libraries Using User Driven Model for Selecting E-books Same as for Libraries Not Using this Technique • Surveys show students prefer web based information • Students are on the web, e-books are there too • Allows libraries in a consortia to leverage their buying power – share costs • Allows libraries to share monographs with other libraries in ways printed books cannot be shared

4. Case Study: European Organization for Nuclear Research • Why did they employ this technique? • They wanted books from multiple publishers, only those read by their physics, math, engineering and computing researchers, and to pay only for what was read.

5. Case Study: European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cont’d) • How did they do it? • Contracted with EBL, loaded records for likely titles, reader gets to read free for five minutes, upon hitting that mark they borrow the book, after two borrows CERN buys the book. • They buy books for a year at a time.

6. Case Study: European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cont’d) Results: They are pleased and amazed with the range of books bought and the amount of use. http://doc.cern.ch/archive/electronic/cern/preprints/open/open-2007-001.doc

7. Case Study: OCLC Corporate Library, USA • Why did they employ use this technique? • 85% of the materials added to their corporate library are the result of direct user requests: “if one person wanted it, others might also.” • How did they do it? • Loaded management, computer science, technology and library science bibliographic entries in catalogue and bought them when read.

8. Case Study: OCLC Corporate Library, USA (Cont’d) Results: Books read multiple times – not just once. Staff continued to go into NetLibrary through other channels for non work related reasons – more than for work related reasons – very difficult to predict what readers will want to read. E-books case study: The OCLC Library. Lawrence Olszewski, Director

9. Case Study: Marion County Multi-type Library Consortium, USA • Why use this technique? • “most of the use of a book collections is generated by a small percentage of the collection – the 80/20 rule” • “that the best predictor of the future use of a title is past use” • “the ability to purchase only needed books at the time of need should be more efficient that selecting titles in the traditional manner” • How did they do it? • Loaded NetLibrary records, bought what was needed.

10. Case Study: Marion County Multi-type Library Consortium, USA (Cont’d) Results: Readers bought too much, adjusted buying trigger, went along successfully until NetLibrary changed policy and required multiple copies, consortium couldn’t afford this model and stopped in 2006. Only about 50% of titles read resulted in a purchase. Books continue to be read. Many purchased out-of-profile books, e.g., 355 Complete Idiots Guides. David W. Lewis. The Marion County Internet Library and E-Books: The Experience of a Multi-type Library Consortium

11. Case Study: Swinburne University of Technology, Australia • Why this technique: • “. . . Scarce monograph materials budgets are wasted on materials for which our predictors or instincts filed us – books which no one will read. We will spend a not insignificant amount of time and effort in adding them to our collections, and after however many years of inactivity, removing them again.” • How did they do it: • Loaded records, paid borrowing charge for first and second uses but then bought at 3rd use.

12. Case Study: Swinburne University of Technology, Australia (Cont’d) Results: 75% of purchased books have been subsequently read. By way of contrast, of 24 titles manually purchased have been subsequently read at least 3 times. Gary Hardy, Tony Davies. Letting the patrons choose – using EBK as a method for unmediated acquisition of ebook materials.

13. Case Study: HKU libraries and the CCDM Consortia • Why this technique employed? • Less expensive to purchase only that which is read and cheaper to split costs with 4 other libraries than to go it alone. • How did they do it? • Libraries loaded all NetLibrary records and paid after two free uses.

14. Case Study: HKU libraries and the CCDM Consortia (Cont’d) Results: Too successful. Readers read too much and other library partners unwilling to pay the bills plus some libraries saw this as abrogating selection responsibility.

15. The Results of Patron Driven VS Librarian Driven Selection Compared

16. What does this data tell us? • Not all subjects result in the same use patterns • User selected e-books generally out circulate librarian selected ones

17. The Future of the User Driven Model: Issues • Publisher pressures to get back to one library, one copy, way of doing business (It killed the printed scholarly monograph, let’s see how fast it can kill the scholarly e-monograph).

18. The Future of the User Driven Model: Issues (Cont’d) • Desire of libraries to buy new imprints, once they get beyond the initial decision to buy a few thousand (for Chinese e-books, a few tens of thousands) stage of building an e-book collection. Can publishers and vendors produce?

19. The Future of the User Driven Model: Issues (Cont’d) • Can libraries get away from buying books, a high percentage of which won’t be read, and move money to the user-driven model? – They can’t do both at the same time.