jisc national e-books observatory project

JISC Collections 20 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 1

Digital Library Executive Briefing

Hazel WoodwardUniversity Librarian, Cranfield University

Chair of the NEBO Project Board

Caren MilloyJISC Collections

E-books Project Manager

Presentation to the ICOLC Conference 20th October 2008

JISC national e-books observatory project


Project Aims

1. license collections of e-books that are highly relevant to UK higher education taught course students in four discipline areas:

– Business and Management studies

– Engineering

– Medicine (not mental health or nursing)

– Media Studies

2. evaluate the use of the e-books through deep log analysis and to asses the impact of the ‘free at the point of use’ e-books upon publishers, aggregators and libraries

3. achieve a high level of participation in the project by making the e-books available on the bidders own platform (where appropriate) and on a variety of e-book aggregator platforms. Higher education institutions will thus have the option to access the e-books on platforms they already use and which are familiar to their users.

4. transfer knowledge acquired in the project to publishers, aggregators and libraries to help stimulate an e-books market that has appropriate business and licensing models


Project participation

Project Participation

127

80

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

1 2E-book Collection

Nu

mber

of

Su

bscri

bers

MyiLibrary

Ovid76%

47%


Deep Log Analysis Study

January 2008 – June 2009

Finding about how users use e-books to inform business models and licensing models


What is DLA?

“DLA provides a detailed assessment of the information seeking

behaviour of users and these data can be used to help determine

impacts and outcomes through qualitative means. DLA involves the

processing of huge volumes of usage and search data as provided

in the raw transactional logs of publishers/aggregators and then

relating this to user demographics to provide a whole range of

evidence-based user portraits – hence the word “deep”. In turn this

information provides the foundation for follow-up user surveys and

interviews, in that the logs raise the questions that need to be

asked and the self-report and qualitative data provides the answers

to these questions.”Rowlands. I., Nichols. D., Jamali. H. and Huntington. P., 2007. What do faculty and students really think about e-books? Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives. [online] 56 (6), 489-511 Available from www.emeraldinsight.com/0001-253X.htm


Deep Log Analysis

Benchmarking data collection

– user survey & institutional survey

Analysis of raw server log data

8 Case Studies

– focus groups with academics, students, librarians

Analysis of impact on traditional print sales

Analysis of promotional methods, business and licensing methods

Benchmarking exit survey

Final report and recommendations


What they say they do

Dissatisfaction with current library provision

– 21.8% of students `dissatisfied’ or `very dissatisfied’ with library provision of printed course textbooks

– Around half of teachers report regular complaints about library provision

– 65.5% in media studies!

High levels of interest in e-books

– 60% of the academic population is already using e-books

– Especially popular with men and postgraduate students

Low student content purchasing intentions

JISC Project texts (only):

– Student purchasing intentions appear low (3.1%)

– There is much reliance here on library copies (35.8%)

– Multiple readership (sharing with a friend) (40%)This is not a generalisable finding to all e-books.


What they say they do

Screen reading or print – a red herring?

– Reading from the screen 62.6% say they read the contents of the e-book from the screen

– Only 6.4% say they print it out

– 54.3% students say they ‘dip in and out’

– 38% students spend more than 20 mins reading online, 36% spend 11-20 mins reading online

Role of the physical or virtual library

– Physical library: 45.2% students go every week

– Virtual library: 43.8% student go every week

Access from outside the campus

– Students and staff, but especially women students, value the convenience of being able to access library services from home: 41.6% access the virtual library from home(44.3% female, 36.8% males)


How they say they find the books

Discovering e-book content

The survey shows the importance of catalogue records and the library website in discovery and use of course text e-books

– 31% of students use the library website

– 23% of students use the library catalogue

– 19.3% of students find out about the books from their tutor

This is why we need good MARC Records and persistent URLs and ISBNs for e-books! – It needs another presentation to tell you about all the issues we’ve discovered about the implementation of standards (or the lack of)!


Top 10 e-book advantages

Advantage No %

Online access 6169 52.44

Seachability 1556 13.23

Cost 1266 10.76

Portability 623 5.30

Convenience 340 2.89

Eco-friendly 323 2.75

Storage 258 2.19

Easy to navigate 253 2.15

Multiple users 203 1.73

Easy to locate 152 1.29


Raw server log analysis

26 of 36 course text e-books are on MyiLibrary

– Business and Management

– Engineering

– Media Studies

Over 100,000 e-books available on MyiLibrary platform

13,000 of the 100,000 e-books were used by institutions participating in the project who have subscriptions direct with MyiLibrary


Raw server log analysis

How long their sessions are (19mins)

Usage by day and hour (Thursday is study day)

Where the users are spending their time

How they find navigate to the e-book………………….

72.4%

5.1%

11.4%

8.2%

2.9%

Content

Searches

Menus

Home page

Other

41.8

28.5

2.71

26

LibrarywebsiteCatalogue

VLE

Metalib

Other


Appearance of JISC e-books in the MyiLibrary top 10

All e-book ranked by usage

JISC e-books Non JISC e-books

Top ten (1-10)

Next ten(11-20)

Next ten(21-30)

Next ten (31-40)

Next ten (41-50)

8

2

2

2

2

2

8

8

8

8

Top 50 titles by usage

16 34


Case Studies

8 case study institutions:

– University of Cambridge

– University of East Anglia

– University of Liverpool

– University College London

– University of Birmingham

– University of East London

– Glamorgan University

– Glasgow Caledonian University

Librarian, teaching staff and student focus groups

– Use data, creation and design, impact on teaching & learning, promotion, pricing & licensing, circulation data

– Compare benchmarking data, deep log data and find out why users behave in a the ways that we have seen


JISC E-books UK Roadshow

12 workshops 250 librarians

from 131 institutions


Drivers

1.Interoperability & better technology

2.Student Expectations

3.Publisher Buy-In

4.Updated Teaching Styles

5.Standards policy and adoption

6. Author Buy-In

7. Budgets

8. Space

9. New Business Models

10. Open Access


Business model trials

A Study on the Management and Economic Impact of E-textbook Business Models on Publishers, E-book Aggregators and Higher Education Institutions

Impact on publisher print sales / revenue and library budgets

Levels of administrative burden and ease of implementation

Sustainability both in terms of profitability and value for money


The future e-book

Is it time for a new format and structure for the e-book.

Are our behaviours driven by physical capacity? For example, does the number of books we can carry, or browse through or indeed use at any one time influence the way we search and read in the physical library? If so, are we unnecessarily transferring those limitations into virtual world?

Do students really want interactivity from e-books or just a PDF?

Should we even have e-books at all or just databases of content?

How do e-books fit more broadly into the student learning experience along with other resources such as Virtual Learning Environment content?

Can segmentation help us to profile users according to geography and type of institutions and academic level and so enable libraries and publishers to better meet their needs?


What do we hope to achieve?

The UK education community will have access to quality e-book content that is of high relevance to teaching, learning and research across the broadest range of

subject areas.

Flexible business and licensing models will support a diversity of needs, allowing users to do what they want

when they want and how they want for education purposes.

All e-books will be easily discoverable and consistent standards will allow all content to be fully integrated

into library, learning and research environments.

E-Books Working Group Vision 2007


Questions?

www.jiscebooksproject.org

[email protected]

[email protected]

jisc national e-books observatory project

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