The study looks at a variety of acquisition models to addresses these questions:
"Is single-user or multi-user access required? Is unlimited usage needed or will some kind of ‘ceiling’ on usage be sufficient? Does the library wish to own the e-book outright or should it be ‘leased’ (an important consideration if a work is likely to run to newer editions)? Is there value in buying a collection or is it more efficient to purchase on a title-by-title basis?" (p. 201).Title-by-title purchasing is popular among academic libraries for purchasing e-books, but the authors note that it "mirrors older print purchasing models" (p. 202) that might not have been very efficient. They cite figures from University of Leeds and University of York libraries to show a high percentage of print purchases that never circulate, but their figures also suggest that e-books (presumably those purchased title by title) circulate at a higher rate than the same titles in print. They also suggest that patrons sometimes peruse the digital version of a book to decide whether to use it or not and then check out the print version if they decide they want to use it.
Package/collection purchasing of e-books seems to present the same issues as the model presents for purchases of print books. Package purchasing assures a library has good coverage of a topic, but the cost per use varies significantly depending on how many books in the collection are used.
Patron-driven acquisition is becoming more feasible with increased distribution of e-books. The model Sharp and Thompson explore is similar to that described by Breitbach & Lambert for Cal State Fullerton. Sharp and Thompson identify issues that this model creates:
"The disadvantages for the library are that the model is more difficult to map onto existing budgetary structures and can make monitoring spend more difficult, with purchasing patterns being less easy to predict. There is scope for a small number of customers to monopolize purchasing (unless the library sets some local limits), and there are difficulties in knowing what is the most appropriate purchase threshold" (p. 204).The University of York purchased both title-by-title and through a patron-driven acquisition plan from the same distributor and was therefore able to compare use and costs. The results the authors describe are not clear to me, but it seems the title-by-title purchases received higher use at lower page view cost. The wild card, however, is that the title-by-title purchases were driven in part by their appearance on professors' reading lists, which is also a form of patron-driven acquisition. The authors also cite a study at Claremont College that indicated both higher use and lower per use cost for e-books purchased through patron-driven acquisition. (Price, J and McDonald, J, Beguiled by bananas: A retrospective study of the usage & breadth of patron vs. librarian acquired ebook collections: http://ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/lea&CISOPTR=177&filename=50.pdf ).
The publisher Elsevier provides a patron-driven acquisition plan different from that described by Breitbach & Lambert at Cal State Fullerton that it calls Evidence-Based Purchasing. In this model the library includes all the e-book titles from a particular collection in its catalog and patrons have access to them for 12 months. No automatic purchases are triggered. At the end of the 12 months the publisher provides usage statistics to the library, which then decides which books to purchase. The payment plan for this model is not fully explained; the publisher receives a deposit at the beginning of the 12 months but it is not clear if the university is obliged to spend a predetermined amount on perpetual purchases at the end of the 12 months.
The authors summarize efforts at the University of Utah (search Rick Anderson's name) to implement both patron-initiated e-books purchases and patron-initiated print-on-demand.
My thoughts
The pattern I am seeing in the literature I am reading is that there is a lot of reporting on the experiments going on at various libraries. Researchers are not yet ready to draw conclusions or predict where things will be in five years. The consistent advice is to try as much as possible on a small scale so you are ready when particular models come to dominate the market.
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