Information Scotland

The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland

February 2008 Volume 6(1)

Digital environment

New model learning?

Jill Evans and Elizabeth McHugh question the current business models of e-books. Are they flexible enough to ensure they are as easy as possible for the end user to access?.

SCURL, SLIC and MmiTs recently organised the annual e-books event as described in the previous issue of Information Scotland, and e-books and e-journals continue to dominate areas of my responsibilities as the Service Development Manager. Two of the Affiliated Groups to SCURL, the Scottish Academic Books Consortium, (SCABS) and the Scotland Northern Ireland PEriodical Supply (SNIPES) have been composing Invitations To Tender for the supply and delivery of books and periodicals. Both contracts are for three years and represent a significant expenditure for Scottish academic libraries.

I am delighted that the further education library sector is represented on these SCURL groups as our FE college librarians provide an insight into the different content with which they would wish to have access. Both groups have the benefit of the wisdom of their Chairs: Colin Galloway of Glasgow University Library, Chair of SCABS; and Jeremy Upton of St Andrews University Library, Chair of SNIPES. The individual members of these groups also have significant expertise in e-provision with their knowledge on the intricacies of VAT, concurrent use, single use, platform changes, bundles and deals. I am confident that the users of the libraries and institutions will benefit from the best possible deal and value for money once the contracts are let, later this year.

Last year provided me with a significant learning curve on procurement matters and engagement with the Advanced Procurement for Universities and Colleges (APUC) colleagues but it is the courtesy, wisdom, mutual respect and sharing of knowledge within the librarianship profession that continues to inspire me. An example of ‘evidence based practice’ is the second part of this article, which has been contributed by my colleague Elizabeth McHugh, Electronic Resources Manager for the UHI Millennium Institute.

Accessing and using e-books: thoughts and counter-thoughts, by Elizabeth McHugh

Here at UHI we are just starting to use permanently purchased e-books. We are training the users on how to use the supplier’s platform and I’m putting the MARC records, for the complete books, through the ILS and providing links to the titles held in the platform.

We are starting to build a collection in the same way as we would do with print titles – from reading lists. I am connecting them to the catalogue and trying to work out the best way of promoting them, through the catalogue and other methods, including encouraging direct links from the VLE. I suspect I’m building a rod for my own back in linking the e-book to the print equivalent and linking them back a couple of editions as well as forward (where the option exists). I can see problems with this down the line as we get more e-books. But I thought I would try it and see if it acts as a promotion method. However, there could be other ways of doing things.

Chapter and page level linking, with the attendant MARC records (if possible or necessary) both in the ILS and through the VLE, would be useful, providing the URLs are stable – and if they work with whatever authentication methods might be in use by the institution. But the URLs need to be easy to find, e.g. via the browser address bar. Putting the URLs in the platform might work from a suppliers point of view, but from my perspective it’s an extra step to finding the correct URL that the user might not be willing to make. Making chapters and page ranges easy to search in the catalogue, VLE and via a federated search engine would be helpful. A question I have is, how would chapters and page ranges be represented in the supplier’s platform so that the user isn’t confused into thinking they are getting the complete book?

If a lecturer really would like to specify reading material within a VLE or highlight a particular section of a book, the function to be able to purchase and make accessible page ranges, chapters or otherwise, from a book, without purchasing the whole edition of the e-copy, could be part of future supply models. After all, there might be reasons why lecturers wouldn’t want the whole book purchased. Perhaps this function already is available from some suppliers.

If we are looking at cost per page, are we looking at a stable cost per publisher regardless of the academic discipline the book belongs to? At what point does it become more economic to purchase the entire e-book rather than just small chunks of it? Where a new edition is issued should we be looking at an exchange model – where we purchase a title in perpetuity and if we need the new edition when it comes out then could we exchange it for a nominal fee? If there are more chapters and pages in the new edition then we pay for the extra pages and if there are less we pay a nominal fee for the edition itself. I’m not talking about a subscription whereby we would get the new title automatically – there might be good reasons for retaining an old edition, or even having both old and new in the catalogue.

Suppliers and publishers are going to have to look at ways of making access and linking methods as easy as possible for the end user – regardless of size of content and format – integrating multimedia into e-books where possible. Is it economic to purchase in micro-payments? Publishers must accept that to encourage growth in the e-book market they will have to make available titles, including course texts, that people want. They need to consider flexibility of access and change their current business models to accommodate the flexibility that ‘e’ provides us with. At the risk of being shot down in flames by a publisher, it’s not as if users are paying for the paper the literature is being printed on...

Information Scotland Vol. 6(1) February 2008

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Last updated: 16-Jul-2008