Statistics, reactions and access issues surrounding ebooks.

1. ebook collection development
@ Judge Business School
Andy Priestner, March 2012

2. policy

3. 1. Check if an ebook is available before purchasing
a printed book (generally Dawsonera)
2. Check the ERDB and elsewhere
3. If ebook is available, only purchase an
additional printed book if the item is cited on a
reading list as an ‘essential text’ or ‘essential
reading’
4. Let ebooks administrator know
policy

4. statistics

5. Currently 562 ebooks in business & management
Oxford: 263
Dawsonera: 119*
MyiLibrary: 106
InTech (free): 32
ACLS: 20
EBSCO (formerly NetLibrary): 15
Cambridge: 5
Miscellaneous: 5*
*purchased direct from Judge I&LS budget
statistics

6. Usage figures for Dawsonera titles (2009 – present)
statistics

7. ebook expenditure and no of titles purchased (dera)
statistics

8. Overall expenditure 2011-12
printed books: £8.5k
ebooks: £4.3k (incl. ebooks@cambridge contribution)
statistics

9. % of books ‘in high demand’ available as ebooks
No of books in high demand: 75
• Available as ebooks: 23
• Available printed only: 52
96% of these e-books were
31% individually purchased from
Dawsonera (so big packages
are not a solution)
statistics

10. survey
results

11. Do you use ebooks?
• 2010-11: 74% yes
• 2011-12: 61% yes
Positives and negatives:
Positives
Negatives
survey
results

12. Qualitative responses
• ‘Why don’t you just make all your books available as ebooks?’
• ‘I can only download up to 10 pages at a time, which is a pain as you
have to be logged in to read’
• ‘Range of ebooks is poor. Few of the required MPhil titles available’
• ‘Some only give you permission to read them for a day, and you need
to be online to access them’
• ‘Not practical if you want to read the book on a train’
• ‘Better when using just to look up a couple of things, but when it's to
read extensively, and retain information, I find them far more difficult
to use than print books’
• ‘Would use them more if I had an iPad’
• ‘Although books become heavy if you have to carry a
number round, they are still more portable in some survey
respects’
• ‘I access everything remotely so ebooks are vital for me’ results

13. access

14. “I find it very confusing. I have no idea where I’m
meant to go to access ebooks!”
access

15. Different avenues and platforms
access

17. devices

18. • We can’t offer ebooks on Kindle
• We’re not in a position to (and don’t wish to) lend
out iPads and/or Kindles
• Few people want to read an ebook off a smartphone
devices

19. the future

20. the future
• All new textbooks will be available electronically but publishers will
increase prices to ensure they receive the same level of revenue as
when they sold print and electronic (regardless of cheaper production
costs)
• Ebooks will be a pastiche of audio and video not just text.
• Only best-selling books will be published in printed form (i.e. few
academic texts), however, libraries will still stock printed books that
publishers (or others) do not consider worth digitising.
• Physical libraries will be more about learning spaces and desking
rather than books and bookshelves.
• By the year 200,000, platforms and access will have become
irrelevant as we will all be able to instantly read books through special
ports in our foreheads