Comparing Bananas With Grapes

Comparing Bananas with Grapes: Ebook Use Data from a Bunch of Vendors Joseph Kraus University of Denver Penrose Library November 6, 2009

Introduction
I will be putting this presentation onto Slideshare.
http://www.slideshare.net/jokrausdu
I would like to make this a discussion, not just me talking.
You can read the paper. This is not just a rehash of individual ebook use and section use data.
If you want even more data, I will put more book titles on the web somewhere.
Images are used with CC licenses.

Why did I do this? http://www.flickr.com/photos/auntiep/3083645776/

Why?
I wanted to get a better sense of what topics the computer science and engineering students and faculty find useful.
For other projects, I’ve looked at faculty citation data and journal article download data. Since we have been adding many ebook packages, I wanted to analyze our ebook use data.

What’s up with comparing bananas with grapes?
The vendors provide the data in lots of different ways and formats.
Tough to analyze the data.
Didn’t want to compare apples with oranges because they don’t come in bunches.

Info on the bananas
The bananas are large fruit, and they can’t be eaten in a single bite. These vendors provide section usage. There is no data on individual ebooks.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/revilla/626629815/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/design-dog/1249337589/

Bananas
Knovel
“ Secured Pages Viewed” in their subject areas
Morgan & Claypool
“ Number of Full-text Article Requests (PDF Requests)” from their Synthesis Lectures series titles.

Info on the grapes
The grapes are smaller fruit that can be examined and eaten individually. Most vendors provided individual ebook COUNTER compliant usage statistics. The print book circulation data is not COUNTER compliant.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zest-pk/923930277/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rutty/137533513/

Grapes
CRC ENGnetBASE
Number of “Title Requests”
eBrary
“ Pages Viewed”
“ User Sessions”
ProQuest Safari
Number of “E-Book Uses”
III print book use data
Total Circulation (internal and external)

Difficulties evaluating the data http://www.flickr.com/photos/auntiep/3082810177/

Difficulties evaluating the data
They have different field titles for ebook use.
The vendors provide different numbers of book titles.
We have about 100 Morgan & Claypool titles, while ENGnetBASE is over 900, ebrary has over 45,000 titles
They provide different years of coverage. For example, Safari averages about 2.5 years.
Cost is a factor. Subscription vs. purchase models.
Number of seats or ports (2 seats or unlimited).
Content is viewed and navigated in different ways.
Print book check out times vary (2 hours to one year.)

Did I forget anything? http://www.flickr.com/photos/auntiep/3082809259/

What would I do differently next time?
Have more catalog records
Get statistics for Books24x7

More changes are ahead http://www.flickr.com/photos/auntiep/3083646254/

More changes are ahead
Springer ebooks
State-wide academic library cooperative collection development
Patron driven collection development
Google books
Kindle, B&N Nook, Sony eReaders, iPhones, etc.
Book reading behaviors are changing. Are engineers and CS / IT people ahead of the curve?
Does it depend on the sub-discipline?

Tools to help evaluate the data
Spreadsheets (What I used for the paper)
ScholarlyStats (We are considering)
Spectra Dimension from Library Dynamics (Have)
III ERM and SUSHI statistics (Have)
Serials librarian is running this.
http://www.iii.com/news/pr_display.php?id=424
e-journal usage statistics for the most part

More on Spectra Dimension
http://www.librarydynamics.com/
http://spectra.librarydynamics.net/services/#

Spectra Dimension

Contact info
[email_address]
www.nuthingbut.net
sci-eng-penrose.blogspot.com
friendfeed.com/jokrausdu
twitter.com/jokrausdu
slideshare.net/jokrausdu

Comparing Bananas With Grapes

by Joseph Kraus on Nov 05, 2009

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Comparing Bananas With Grapes — Presentation Transcript