To Supersede or

Supplement? :

Profiling E-book Aggregator Collections vs. Our Print Collections

Jason Price & John McDonaldLibraries, Claremont University

ConsortiumNovember 6, 2007

Motivation

Consortium CEO requested a budget for the library to take a ‘paperless’ approach for future acquisitions

-eJournals -eReference-eBooks (was to be supported by heavy ILL borrowing, though we don’t address that here)

Strategy

• Assess availability and cost of replicating current purchasing patterns in e-format

• Ignore usability & user preferences to start and let the numbers speak for themselves

Today’s talk will focus on availability of ebooks that match libraries’ print collection profiles

Other (more important?) factors…

… that should affect choice of aggregator(s)

• Simultaneous use restrictions• Interface• Pricing model• Price point• Digital rights management

e.g. DRM continuum

Adobe Readeronly

Add’l Reader software

Adobe Reader Only

Outline

1. Aggregator eBook availability profiles

2. Library purchased print book profiles

3. Matching library print purchases vs. eBook availability

Cleaning up the aggregator data• Received full catalog data from all 4

aggregators

• Deleted all records without pISBN13s – Removed less than 8% from any one aggregator– Many more records had pISBNs than eISBNs

• added pISBN10s based on pISBN13s – To allow comparison to print books in collections– (thanks to Ebrary for the batch converter)

• Most records included Pub Year, Publisher, Call number, etc

How many ebooks are available?

What is the age profile of aggregated ebooks?

Aggregator Collection Age (focus)

How much overlap is there

between aggregator collections?

10/2008Total number of unique

books across collections =

246,348= Aggregated

Ebook Marketplace

What proportion of the marketplace is available from

each aggregator?Full Collection: 246,348 unique ebooks

2005 – 2007 Publication Years: 74440 unique e-books

EBRsubs EBL EBRMyI

(minus ICON) NetL

Library Purchase Profile Datasets• SCELC libraries & U. Denver were

asked to export records for all print monographs purchased between 1/1/2006 & 12/31/2007

• They were given a specific step by step procedure that excluded Ebooks, and output:– Title (245)– Pub Year (260|c)– Publisher (260|b)– LC Call # (050)– ISBN 020 (all repeated values)

• 4 libraries sent data + Claremont

‘06-07 Library Purchases: # of print books

Library pBook Purchases: by Publication year

Library pBook Purchases by Discipline

Library pBook Purchases: Overlap

Matching library print purchases to eBook availability

• Compared vendor supplied source lists to print purchase lists

• What are the characteristics of the matching or non-matching items?

pBook purchases not available as eBooks

Electronic availability of purchased books

pBook purchases available as eBooks by Vendor

Library Ebrary Sub EBL Ebrary MyILibrary NetLibrary At least one

C 4.9% 11.9% 13.7% 11.4% 23.3% 27.2%

A 5.4% 10.3% 10.3% 10.8% 18.3% 21.3%

D 4.7% 15.4% 15.4% 11.8% 25.0% 29.4%

L 4.7% 14.6% 14.2% 9.7% 23.2% 27.3%

S 7.1% 13.9% 13.5% 8.0% 23.0% 26.9%

5% 13% 26%23%13% 10%

pBooks Matched v. Not Matched

What ebooks are they providing that we don’t buy in print?

What print books are we buying that eBook aggregators don’t offer electronically?

Do they differ by:• publisher?• subject

eBook non-matches characteristics

Publishers in Library List Books Oxford University Press 281Cambridge University Pr 236Palgrave Macmillan 166Princeton Univ Press 157

University of Chicago Pr 149Routledge 128Yale University Press 125Ashgate 108Harvard University Press 88Univ of California Pr 84MIT Press 81Cornell University Press 75Lexington Books 73

Publishers in eBook List Books Routledge 10170

John Wiley & Sons 8737

Elsevier 7113

Springer 6020

Cambridge University Pr 5183

Taylor & Francis 4092

Palgrave Macmillan 3304

Taylor & Francis Ltd 2975

CRC Press 2364

OECD 1929University of Minnesota 1564

Emerald 1516

Oxford University Press 1491

Print books not available electronically

Subject Areas BooksHistory, North America 660Visual Arts (General) 580Literary History & Collections 573American Literature 571Literature of Music 436History, Asia. Middle East 411Economic History (by Subject) 389English Literature 382Romance Literatures 364Theory & Practice of Education 360Philosophy 305History, Western Hemisphere 293

Summary of results• Aggregator title lists are largely unique (>50% only available from 1 agg.)• Only 1 in 4 print titles purchased by any

individual library during 2006-2007 is available in the ‘eBook Aggregator marketplace’

• Initial observations suggest that many print univ. press titles Claremont purchased are not available from eBook aggregators

Main point: Supersede or Supplement?

• Can’d supersede: 75% of our print book purchases aren’t available as ebooks

• There are many ways to supplement:– Subscription– Publisher subject collections– Demand-driven purchasing (see Friday

aft. panel)

Questions?

Jason & JohnNovember 6, 2008

Discussion points

• What are some potential explanations for low match rates?

• There is no unique identifier of book content

• Are collections librarians ready to shift funds from print book purchases to ebook purchases?

(Jason’s) Opinions• It is unfortunate that the richest

aggregator collection is also the least usable (NetLibrary)

• Subscribed collections serve to supplement most affordably and could drive print use

• Best place to supersede right now is probably direct from no-DRM Publisher collections especially in the disciplines where multi-author books are the norm

• Purchasing & Hosting on 4 different aggregators is not an attractive solution