The ‘big deal’ approach to acquiring e‐books: a usage‐based study

Abstract

126The 'big deal' approach to acquiring e-books: a usage-based study This paper presents the results of an analysis of COUNTER e-book usage reports for SpringerLink e-book collections purchased since July 2008 at the University of Liverpool. The usage reports were augmented with contextual title-level information drawn from Springer's eBooks Title List. The combined data was used to study how usage of e-books is influenced by factors such as the subject area, the year of publication and the length of time since the collection was acquired. Analysis was performed to simulate the effects of user-driven purchasing to determine whether this model could apply to this type of content.The study concludes that this 'big deal' approach has worked well: all but one of the subject areas have been well used, the number of unused titles continues to diminish each year, older titles continue to attract significant usage, and the cost-per-use is relatively low.The challenge remains to find pricing models that allow more libraries to acquire e-book collections when budgets may be largely committed to journals. TERRY BUCKNELL Electronic Resources Manager University of Liverpool Serials -23(2), July 2010Terry Bucknell The e-book 'big deal': a usage-based study 127 About Springer e-booksSpringer e-books are sold in 12 (formerly 13, but Birkhäuser Architecture has recently been sold) annual subject collections, with each year's collections containing around 3,500 titles. From 2005 forward all Springer book titles have been published online as well as in print. The collection is strong in STM subjects plus business and management, with a smaller number of titles in other humanities and social science subjects. The e-book collections are characterized by a high proportion of research monographs, contributed volumes and conference proceedings but also include textbooks and major reference works. They are mainly aimed at researchers from the advanced undergraduate level upwardsThe SpringerLink platform presents e-book chapters alongside e-journal articles on a single interface. Each chapter is a PDF file that may be viewed, downloaded or printed in its entirety. MARC records are provided for each collection from 2005 onwards, and COUNTER-compliant usage reports are provided. It is notable that the use of Springer e-journals increased significantly between 2008 and 2009, even after excluding the usage of an additional collection that was added to Liverpool's big deal in 2009. This suggests that having access to e-books on the same platform as e-journals does have an inflationary effect on the usage of the e-journals. This will be closely watched to see if this pattern continues into 2010 and also if there are similar effects on other combined-content platforms. Results of e-book usage statistics study Overall use of e-books Use of e-books by book type Year of publicationOne major area of interest was the longevity of interest in scientific e-books: would they cease to be of much interest once they were more than a few years old? Figur...

Factors Influencing the Usage of an Electronic Book Collection: Size of the E-book Collection, the Student Population, and the Faculty Population

“…30 The very high correlation coefficients reported for viewings (r = 0.91) and searches (r = 0.96) lend support to these previous findings. There is an extremely strong link between the size of an e-book collection and the level of usage.…”

Literature of Acquisitions in Review, 2010–11

“…Bucknell reviewed the COUNTER usage reports for one such collection and found that this approach was working well because use was good across most subjects, the number of unused titles diminished each year, older titles continued to be used, and the cost-per-use was relatively low. 39 Other libraries have tried this approach and found it problematic. Schroeder and Wright reviewed their experience with leased collections such as those offered by ebrary and Safari and found that only 20-35 percent of the titles in the collections were being used.…”

Disruption and Disintermediation

“…After analyzing usage reports for an e-book collection at the University of Liverpool, Bucknell concluded that acquiring e-books in a Big Deal package was a good investment for the library. 83 Sprague and Hunter combined use statistics with bibliographic data to assess collections acquired from three major e-book providers, including an analysis of title overlap. 84 The authors were surprised to find relatively low use of e-books across all subject areas and platforms at the University of Idaho.…”