Print Book Circulation & E-Book Usage: Data, Trends, & Implications

Luke SwindlerUNC University Library, Collections Management Officer

TRLN Annual Meeting15 July 2015

UNC Print Book Circulation Totals

FY2009/2010 = 836,031

FY2010/2011 = 771,473

FY2011/2012 = 730,659

FY2012/2013 = 684,837

FY2013/2014 = 597,197

During this 5-year period the print collections grew by 405,534 volumes while their total circulation decreased by 238,839 or 29%During this 5-year period print circulation declines accelerated, falling from 64,558 between FY2009/2010 & FY2010/2011 to 87,640 between FY2012/2013 & FY2013/2014

Print Books Circulation Data & Trends

As research libraries buy more print books, their aggregate circulation steadily declines

Increasing print acquisitions will not change this situation, especially since it would result in acquiring more specialized titles that will register even lower levels of need or no use at all

Print books are an increasingly marginal niche resource for supporting instruction and research, especially with the growing acceptance of e-books

E-book availability further depresses circulation of print counterparts (especially when they become accessible before the print versions)

E-Books Usage Data & Trends

As research libraries buy more e-books, their aggregate usage steadily increases

E-book usage growth exceeds the increase in the number of e-books UNC libraries acquires

E-books now greatly exceeds print circulation at UNC—a trend that not only will continue but also probably accelerate

8 publishers/vendors representing the e-book platforms with the largest number of titles in UNC collections (ebrary, Springer, OUP, CUP, Wiley, SAGE, Elsevier, and EBSCOhost) alone registered 881,682 uses—or more than all print circulation for all publishers

When placed in the context of total monographic titles available, the relative levels of use are even greater:

3,915,878 print titles as of 6/1/2015 registered 597,197 circulations in FY2013/2014, for a ratio of .15

245,442 e-books for these 8 publishers/vendors registered 881,682 uses in 2014, for a ratio of 3.6 or 23X more than print books

Changing Collections Contexts

“Collections are no longer the defining feature of libraries. Collections that are important to users are found everywhere.” Deanna Marcum, ITHAKA S+R Managing Director

Shift of collections from predominance to prominence

Shift from finite collections towards infinity and the leveling affect

Shift from book scarcity to abundance, if not ubiquity

Shift from collections of record to collections of use

Shift in answering the question of “how good are the collections?”

Changing Collections Goals & Objectives

“The emergent electronic realm will, in time, pretty much relegate new analog materials to a diminishing subset of primary sources. Digital resources will increasingly define

both the information and the scholarly landscapes.” Dan Hazen, then Associate Librarian for Collection Development, Harvard University

Moving from an overall quantitative to qualitative approach to building library collections

Print books title-by-title acquisitions as a loser proposition & strategies for cutting losses

E-books en bloc acquisitions as a value proposition & strategies for maximizing academic support

Achieving Quantitative Excellence Qualitatively

E-books Available from Core Publishers – as of 6/19/2015(based on catalog records counts using

publisher=exact name and format=e-book)

Publisher UNC CountSpringer 45,031Oxford UP 18,034Cambridge UP 12,936Wiley 9,912SAGE 5,052Elsevier 3,124Harvard UP 1,863