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

Fri May 12 15:46:01 PDT 2017

Amy, a question in response to your post. Are your print circulation use
statistics really going up and not down? We are finding that patrons simply
aren't asking for printed books, period. Just when I think use will level
off (at a very low level compared to 10, 15, 20 years ago) it drops again.
We are still getting print books, but they aren't really wanted.

By contrast, ebook use is still increasing, especially as we add more
"evidence based" models. Faculty frequently comment on how helpful it is to
have so much available in electronic format. It could be that only 10% of
what is available to them is being used, but when there are hundreds of
thousands of ebooks available to our patrons, far more than we could ever
purchase in print, it's far better than what we are seeing in print use.
I'm not offering 10% as any official measure,  just using your figure. I
was monitoring it for a while, but no longer have time to do even that.
You're right, comparing use is apples and oranges, but a full 1/3 of our
print collection has never been used, ever, and that was money spent. The
unused e-books cost us almost nothing.

I would love to sit around selecting print books. That will probably never
happen again in any significant way. I love to look through those we do
receive. Oh the days when - long before I began my library career -
librarians had time to cut out newspaper book reviews and paste them into
the covers of their acquisitions! If anyone wants to offer me a job to do
that, give me a ring!

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

On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 10:48 AM, Amy Lynn Fry <afry at bgsu.edu> wrote:

> I would just like to jump in to this conversation briefly.
>
>
>
> I’m at a very middle of the road mid-sized public university. I looked
> very carefully at the use of our firm ordered and approval books and
> compared it to the use of our ebook collections acquired during the same
> period of time, and data here just do not support moving to ebooks. If my
> goal for the monographic information we have available to people is for it
> to get used, then print books are a better purchase. Far more titles we buy
> in print get used than ebooks do.
>
>
>
> In looking closely at published studies of the use of ebooks (I’m pretty
> confident I looked at all the published studies), most showed that about
> 10% of the ebooks made available to users ever get used. These studies were
> a mix of DDA and other kinds of packages. People tend to get distracted by
> the high number of “uses” ebooks get, but it’s important to remember that
> uses are a mixed bag – you’re mostly shown number of page impressions and
> that kind of thing, where you would expect a high number. In reality, in
> most instances, not many titles get much use. Some people get excited about
> how much money they save by doing DDA – I get sad when I hear that, because
> what it really means is that library’s users just aren’t using books. And
> part of the reason often is that most people really don’t want to use
> ebooks, so if that’s all you have your users may go elsewhere.
>
>
>
> It is difficult intellectual work to be a good selector, but not
> impossible, and with the potential low rate of ebook use you’re almost
> certain to beat it even doing a bad job selecting print – if what’s
> important is getting monographic information into the minds of readers and
> not just spending as little as possible.
>
>
>
> I do feel like I go against the industry when I say things like this, but
> I get my opinion from a careful study of all the data available to me. I am
> about to update all my data, something I’m dreading a little because it was
> so hard to pull together. Maybe ebooks are increasing in popularity at my
> institution now. Maybe 75% of our print books are no longer circulating.
> I’m open to changing my approach to collection development. But I think in
> the case of ebooks librarians have erred more on the radical approach in
> order to get rid of the work of selecting, and don’t really have data that
> supports it being best for users. Most of the newer librarians I work with
> have no interest in selecting, not even when it’s part of their job. That
> makes me sad. The less of our collection is well-selected and usable, the
> less relevant it becomes, and the less relevant the library as an
> institution becomes.
>
>
>
> I am not against all ebook purchasing or all ebook plans, lest you want to
> accuse me of doing that. My data and knowledge makes me good at making good
> decisions about ebooks. Right now I am all about moving ebook money towards
> EBA plans with the best platforms and university press content – Project
> MUSE, JSTOR and Oxford’s University Press Scholarship Online are the best
> value and will get the most use. But moving to e is really not right for
> every institution.
>
>
>
> Amy Fry
>
> Associate Professor, E-resources Librarian
>
> Jerome Library
>
> Bowling Green, OH 43403
>
> afry at bgsu.edu
>
> *email is the best way to reach me*
>
>
>
> *From:* Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] *On Behalf Of *VanUllen,
> Mary K
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 10, 2017 3:03 PM
> *To:* eril-l <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
>
> *Subject:* Re: [Eril-l] FW: [EXTERNAL] request for examples of libraries
> almost entirely non-firm ordering, print and e
>
>
>
> 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
> <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 <(907)%20474-6695>
>
> kljensen at alaska.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 10:38 AM, Steve Oberg <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
>
> NASIG Vice-President/President-Elect
>
>
>
>
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