Engel-Unruh, M. (2010). ReKindling an Interest in Reading with At-Risk Students. Library Media Connection, 29(3), 54-56. Retrieved November 4, 2011, from Academic Search Complete.
The author, a high school teacher librarian, used grant money to purchase 11 Kindles and an Amazon gift card and at the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year formed a once-a-week Kindle Club with "at-risk" students to motivate them to read. She reports that the experiment was a hit from the first session and that students remained excited to read on their Kindles week after week.
Engel-Unruh attributes the success of the experiment to Kindle features that support struggling readers:
- Access to books of their choice (690,000 titles as of September 2010).
- Teaching students to use Amazon's subject directory to find books on topics they want to read.
- The immediacy of downloads, both of sample material and of the books themselves.
- Adjustable text sizes, dictionary look-up of words, text-to-speech, highlighting, bookmarking, and annotation
- The book-sharing feature of the Kindle (one title can be downloaded to six Kindles) helps build community among the club members. When one student likes a books and other are interested, they can share the book at no additional cost with five other Kindles.
Engel-Unruh reports that students use the text-to-speech function regularly. They say that hearing the word while they are reading helps develop their vocabulary.
The author provides anecdotal evidence of increased reading but no systematic quantitative data.
After the first year, Engel-Unruh purchased enough additional Kindles to have a class set, which she houses on a cart and loans to classroom teachers.
My thoughts
It sounds like the students only had the Kindles for the one hour each week that the Kindle Club met. I wonder if it would be feasible to let the students have the Kindles longer, like over the weekend, since the club met on Fridays? If they showed interest for the hour, what might they have done with permanent access?
This report supports my suspicion that students would take to Kindles quickly, that the "cool" factor would generate a lot of buzz.
Sanborn, L. D. (2011). eBook collections for high schools. School Library Monthly, 28(1), 37-38. Retrieved November 4, 2011, from Academic Search Complete.
This article compares the products and prices of five commercial venders that provide collections of titles (not one-by-one acquisition) to school libraries.
ACLA Humanities E-books ("best buy")
Ownership or lease: annual subscription
Number of titles: 2,800 at time of writing; 500 more summer 2011
Simultaneous or single user access: Unlimited concurrent users
Collection coverage: history, religion, art, science history, and literature., most published in last 15 years
Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) model availability: Not applicable
Pricing: $450/year
Net Library (owned by EBSCO)
Ownership or lease: Permanent ownership; title-by-title selection and collection options
Number of titles: not given
Simultaneous or single user access: Single user access
Collection coverage: various; not specified
Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) model availability: One option of several
Pricing: Sets cost from $1,000 to $5,000 and vary in size from 8 to 50 volumes.
Ebrary (part of Proquest)
Ownership or lease: annual subscription
Number of titles: School Edition includes about 7,500 titles
Simultaneous or single user access: Unlimited simultaneous multi-user access
Collection coverage: various; not specified
Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) model availability: Available
Pricing: School Edition costs $2,500/year.
Electronic Book Library (the one chosen by Cushing Academy when the library went digital)
Ownership or lease: title-by-title selection with permanent ownership or PDA model
Number of titles: 150,000+
Simultaneous or single user access: Unlimited simultaneous multi-user access
Collection coverage: not specified
Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) model availability: Available; operates similarly with the system described by Cal State Fullerton
Pricing: One-time set-up fee of $2,000 to $4,000; individual e-book titles are about the same as cloth.
Overdrive
Ownership or lease: Purchase title-by-title
Number of titles: 300,000
Simultaneous or single user access: depends on publisher
Collection coverage: not specified
Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) model availability: not mentioned, so apparently not
Pricing: Annual fee ranges from $2,000 to $50,000 depending on number of students; half the fee can be applied to purchases
Sanborn notes that Project Muse and JSTOR are both expected to enter this market in 2012, and that she expects they will provide good products.
She says that her own library purchased three subscription packages (ACLS, Netlibrary 9, and ebrary’s School Edition) for the equivalent material that would have taken 6.5 years of her library budget in print. She considers it a bargain.
My thoughts
The author doesn't discuss how students read the ebooks as delivered by the various venders.
She doesn't provide enough info on her particular purchase to convince that it was cost effective. Even if it would take 6.5 years of her budget to acquire the same materials in print, at the end of the 6.5 years she would have the books, and with subscriptions she has nothing. If the entire library is replaced every 6.5 years, then the equal starts to balance out, so it depends on what one computes as the replacement cost and rate for a collection.
The ACLA product looks very reasonable, depending on how much the titles would be used. None of the other options looks particularly attractive for my high school, but that depends to some extent on the titles available. It might be worth the high school librarians thinking about it from a district perspective. But we'd still need to address the e-reader issue.
Harland, P., Plante, A., Marker, J., Falter, C., Thompson, K., Guilmett, K., & Hogan, M. (2010). The high school book club -- now with Kindles!. Teacher Librarian, 37(5), 57-59. Retrieved November 2, 2011, from Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text.
In this case study a high school librarian reports the reactions of a high school book group to the acquisition and use of Kindle e-book readers. In the fall of 2009 the club began using Kindles to read their books. The librarian allowed them to acquire any title they wanted (patron-driven acquisition). Through direct quotes from student participants, the article mentions usability issues, including:
- Lack of backlighting, which had pros (didn't light up the room at night) and cons (couldn't read it riding home in the car at night)
- Carrying around so many books in such a small device
- Ease of adding new books; being able to read a book within minutes of becoming aware of the book
- Easier to hold than a big book
- "... on the Kindle I can make notes, highlight passages, and look up words in the online dictionary."
- No one liked the text-to-speech function (which may be upgraded by now).
Other observations:
- At first the discussion in the book club focused on the device rather than the books.
- Students reported reading many more books because they enjoyed using the Kindle; the article doesn't indicate if this was a temporary phenomenon.
- The librarian expressed reservations about the lack of a touch screen and color (which are now available).
On the question of preference of ebooks and traditional books:
Angela summed it up by saying, "I heard the Kindle is going to replace books, but I don't think so. It might replace text books, but not regular books. It may be cheaper and lighter, but people who are real book lovers will not stop buying and reading print books. I love my books and I want to look at the cover of a book and on the inside flaps. When I own a book I want to be able to hold it in my hands. Also, I make a connection to books based on the cover, spine, picture of the author, colors, paper type, and fonts. The Kindle is so much less personalized than the connection I make to regular books. I can't imagine a world when I don't smell a new book again."
My thoughts
The last quote is a good point of departure for my research project. I hear a lot of people saying this, but I bet that most people will adapt to e-book readers fairly quickly. I think 10 years from now the comment here will seem quaint. I'm thinking of designing a study where student perceptions of e-books and their preferences for traditional books are measured in a pre-survey, then students use e-book readers for a specified time, and then take the same survey to try to gauge their changes in perception. Since Harland et al. position this research report as an effort to "observe any changes in the students' reading behavior" following their use of Kindles, it is a point of departure for a more thorough study that I could design.
Sharp, S., & Thompson, S. (2010). 'Just in case' vs. 'Just in time': e-book purchasing models. Serials, 23(3), 201-206. Retrieved October 29, 2011, from Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text.
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.
Clark, D. (2009). Lending Kindle e-book readers: first results from the Texas A&M University project. Collection Building, 28(4), 146-9. Retrieved October 22, 2011, from Library Literature & Information Science Full Text database. doi: 10.1108/01604950910999774
Clark begins this case study by noting: "This is the first study on e-book reader lending services in libraries" (p. 146).
Clark says the Kindle was introduced in 2007 and at the time of his writing was criticized for limiting its use to titles processed by and purchased from Amazon. The earliest libraries to loan Kindles used one of two processes for title acquisition: (1) Loaned an empty Kindle and paid the downloading fee for the book the patron wanted to read; (2) Pre-loaded the Kindle with titles the library had selected.
Clark references his own earlier article that involved a study of student use of 40 Kindles that his library purchased:
"... the investigators concluded that the Kindle is an effective device for basic popular reading, but has limited value for academic reading because of poor graphics, high cost and limited content (Clark et al., 2008)" (p. 147).
At the end of this study they created a program to lend Kindles to patrons, and that experience is the basis of this study.
They followed a patron-driven model for acquisitions: Any title a patron requested that was under $150 was added to a Kindle. Titles were requested through a Web form. They put a limit of three requests on each patron (for each loan period?) and set a loan period of two weeks. At the time of this writing, at least, Amazon allowed a title to be downloaded to six Kindles linked to the same Amazon account.
They marketed the program heavily and concluded that it was very popular. Thirty request for Kindles came in the first day and at the end of the first month there was a waiting list of 108 patrons. Since they marketed the program for general reading, they were not surprised that light fiction was the largest category among the 62 titles downloaded during the first month. They were surprised that almost as many children's lit books were downloaded.
The program began with 6 Kindles but quickly expanded to 12 and then 18. They reduced the loan period to one week and the limit on titles requested for download to one per patron in order to address the long waiting list.
Interesting comment:
"None of the Kindles were returned damaged nor was there evidence of any tampering with the device or the operating system" (p. 148).
My thoughts
It's a little disappointing, but, ultimately, good news, that there isn't more to report in this study than there is. The bottom line is that the program was quite successful and not all that difficult to implement. Since the library was focusing on general reading rather than scholarly reading, the applicability of this experience to my high school library should be high.
The patron-driven acquisition angle is important to me. Also important is the immediate acquisition of titles, especially newly published volumes in a series that have been anticipated by patrons. It's not clear from the study how the titles become part of the online catalog, but that has probably changed in the last two years anyway. Makes me all the more eager to experiment with the Kindle I bought last week, but since that isn't absolutely necessary for this lit review, it's going to have to wait a bit more.
Becker, B. (2011). The e-Book Apocalypse: A Survivor's Guide. Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 30(3), 181-4. Retrieved October 23, 2011, from Library Literature & Information Science Full Text database. doi: 10.1080/01639269.2011.591278.
Writing within the last few months, Becker explains why he thinks 2012 will be a breakthrough year for the emergence of e-books in academic libraries. However, the evidence he provides relates as much to public libraries as to academic libraries. The "horseman" that relates directly to the upcoming explosion of digital scholarly materials that he mentions in the introduction is the first, demand-driven acquisitions.
Horseman 1: Demand-driven acquisitions. Becker describes the DDA process in the same terms as Breitbach & Lambert and says that the ease of implementation for libraries, the ease of use for patrons, and the way the system aligns purchases with patron needs will hasten the addition of e-books to university libraries.
Horsemen 2 & 3: The Kindle and the Nook. Both Kindle and Nook have made advances in recent months (April 2011) that increase their usability.
Kindle: (1) The agreement with Overdrive to make Kindle e-books available to libraries for loan makes it easier for patrons to access e-books. and (2) improves usability of the library e-book experience. That is, patrons using the newer Kindles can annotate a borrowed book on their Kindle and retain access to the annotations if they borrow it again from the library of if they purchase it from Amazon. (3) The reduction in price for Kindles has reached the point where they seem affordable to many more consumers.
Nook: In April 2011 a "free Android OS update" became available for color Nooks that gives them the same functionality of an iPad at one-half the price. This increase in functionality should make the Nook much more popular among consumers and therefore increase the demand for e-books from library patrons.
Horseman 4: Barnes & Noble has positioned itself between college textbook publishers and university bookstores to provide e-textbooks for rent or sale to students. They are providing free PC software to read the e-textbooks; the software's high functionality accommodates the visual complexities of e-textbooks and allows readers to annotate, etc.
My thoughts
This article brings me up to speed on some of the latest developments. Although the focus is on public and university libraries, when these two segments of the library world move to the next level on e-books, the high school library world will see increased opportunities for our own development. For us it will be driven, I assume, by Follett and Mackey picking up on the achievements of other players and offering us more services. I think the students will be eager consumers when we offer them the products. Our particular issue with high school students is the e-book device question. I think we have to provide it rather than rely on students purchasing their own.
Emery, J. (2010). Heard on the Net: One byte, two bytes, three bytes for dollars. All for e-books, stand up and holler!. The Charleston Advisor, 12(2), 62-3. Retrieved October 23, 2011, from Library and Information Science database. doi: 10.5260/chara.12.2.62
Using the Hodges, Preston & Hamilton article as her point of departure, Emery describes two e-book pricing models "that are beginning to emerge for libraries to explore" (p. 62).
The first model: "... content starts out Open Access and a library can opt to buy limited branded access with metadata records to load into an OPAC; upgraded purchasing options allow for perpetual access and more refined selection" (p. 62) Bloomsbury Academic is the example she describes. It is primarily for humanities and social sciences.
- Basic membership model: Provides OPAC records for content and information on usage but not perpetual access to the titles.
- Research membership model: Basic + perpetual access to 50 titles.
- Institutional sales model: Basic + option to purchase individual e-textbook titles.
- Print membership: Research or Institutional model + discount on purchase of print titles.
Emery said the question for her is how willing the faculty and libraries are to adopt e-books. Not clear to me if she is referring her to e-textbooks primarily, but she goes on to note that libraries have not traditionally been involved in providing textbooks to students. Libraries would have to adopt structures to handle this and the infrastructure for delivery of e-textbooks to students would have to be addressed (p. 62-63).
The second model: Evidence-Based Selection (EBS), as marketed by Elsevier. Primarily for sciences. Libraries subscribe to sets of ebooks defined by subject (chemistry, biology, etc.). Patrons get full access to the set for 12 months and then the library as the option of purchasing perpetual access to individual titles based on usage during the 12 months. This seems similar to the Cal State Fullerton model.
Emery provides the following reference to a third, patron-driven model: "To read a bit more on patron-driven models, please see Eric Hellman’s blog from 21 June 2010 <http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/06/patron-driven-e-book-acquisition-crab.html>" (p. 62)
My thoughts
Interesting to see how the market is developing. Since this article was published just one year ago, it shows how dynamic the current situation is. Again, I need to talk with Follett and Mackey to see what models they are offering or considering.
Breitbach, W., & Lambert, J. (2011). Patron-driven Ebook acquisition. Computers in Libraries, 31(6), 17-20. Retrieved October 23, 2011, from Library & Information Science database.
This very useful case study describes a model for patron-driven ebook acquisition at California State University–Fullerton’s Pollak Library. The model includes the following pieces:
- Selected an ebook vendor (Ebook Library, or EBL).
- Created a profile of subject areas for the materials the library wanted to acquire.
- Incorporated all the ebook titles from the profiled subject areas into the OPAC (initially almost 26,000 titles; at time of writing almost 44,000 titles).
- Allowed patrons to peruse any ebook. If the perusal lasted longer than 5 minutes, the system triggered a short term loan (STL) and EBL charged the library (about 10 percent of the ebook purchase price; varied by publisher).
- Once an item experienced STL four times, the item was automatically purchased (unless it was over $250, in which case authorization by library staff was required).
- During STL and after purchase: "A user can read the book online or download it (using Adobe Digital Editions), print 20% of the text, and copy and paste 5% of it" (p. 18).
Results
- Found they had to modify the catalog records to align the subject headings with the LOC heading they were already using. This increased the cost of the program, but cataloging was still substantially cheaper than for a standard print book acquisition.
- Reviewing data for first eight months of the program, the authors provide details on expenditures, patron usage (number of books, time spent with book), and use by subject area.
- The authors conclude the the typical cost of acquisition is probably cheaper than for print materials when one factors in cataloging.
- The patron-driven component of the acquisition model means that the acquisitions were actually used, which is never a guarantee with traditional acquisition models.
Conclusion
"Adding tens of thousands of records to the local catalog for little cost and allowing patrons to select only what they want or need has significantly increased the value of the collection. Moreover, the overall transaction cost is far lower than obtaining the items via interlibrary loan or purchasing them outright, and we know the items are being used" (p. 20).
My thoughts
This model looks very intriguing. Does Follett offer an option like this? Or Mackey? Once students are accustomed to ebooks, this would be a great way to build the collection. It's instantaneous, even quicker than my current method of ordering from Amazon. It's seamless in that students don't have to worry about whether the book is currently available; if they want it, it appears to them as if it were already in the library.
There's no mention of how multiple copies work. If a book has been downloaded, can only one patron access it at a time? Probably. If the library has purchased an ebook and it's checked out, do four additional STLs trigger purchase of a second copy?
