[Eril-l] FW: [EXTERNAL] request for examples of libraries almost entirely non-firm ordering, print and e

[VanUllen, Mary K]

At the University at Albany, a larger, public institution, we do some of both.  We tend to find that students in most disciplines generally much prefer print books to ebooks.  In an ideal world, they’d like to have access to both, but we can’t afford that

--Mary


Mary K. Van Ullen
Director of Collections
University Library, LI-328
University at Albany
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY  12222
(518) 442-3559



From: Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] On Behalf Of Karen Jensen
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2017 2:55 PM
Cc: eril-l
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] FW: [EXTERNAL] request for examples of libraries almost entirely non-firm ordering, print and e

Are we seeing a difference in philosophy here due to the nature of the institution? Smaller, wealthier schools maintaining traditional selection methods and favoring print, versus larger state-funded institutions going for the best bang for the buck? It is not inexpensive to have a host of subject librarians selecting printed books title by title, nor cataloging and shelving them, whether they are ever used or not. Much of what we have chosen to do has been driven by financial necessity, but also by patron demand; they want e-books and lots of them, and DDA allows us to make more titles available for consideration - 10 times more titles (or more!) than we could ever dream of acquiring in print. I'm not getting much faculty or student feedback for print; what print requests we receive, we purchase as requested. But the DDA e-book models are much used here, for the reasons stated above.

Karen Jensen
Collection Development Officer
Rasmuson Library
University of Alaska Fairbanks
907-474-6695
kljensen at alaska.edu<mailto:kljensen at alaska.edu>



On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 10:38 AM, Steve Oberg <steve.oberg at wheaton.edu<mailto:steve.oberg at wheaton.edu>> wrote:
This is a good discussion and I just wanted to briefly point out that our library has deliberately chosen _not_ to go in this direction. I realize this is contrary to what Melissa originally asked about. We looked carefully at ebook DDA a few years ago, along with considering how we’d like to handle ebooks vs. print books overall, and concluded that ebook DDA was not well suited to our environment and/or philosophies for collections and user access. So aside from purchasing an occasional large ebook set (think Springer Nature, e.g.), most of our ebooks are individually selected, and we have specific criteria in our collection development policy for when ebooks are preferred rather than print. Put another way, we still prefer print over e in the main for monographs. Our subject librarians make most selections with a few minor exceptions.

The opposite is true for journals, where we prefer e subscriptions and have a big pay-per-view initiative for journal articles that’s going into its sixth year. In addition, we have had a successful print DDA program for a few years now.

Steve

Steve Oberg
Assistant Professor of Library Science
Group Leader for Resource Description and Digital Initiatives
Wheaton College (IL)
+1 (630) 752-5852<tel:(630)%20752-5852>

NASIG Vice-President/President-Elect
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