To Supersede or

Supplement?

Profiling E-book Aggregator Collections vs. Our Print

Collections

Jason Price & John McDonaldLibraries, Claremont University

ConsortiumCharleston Conference,

November 6, 2008

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

• Ignore usability & discipline preferences (at least initially)

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

Today’s talk will focus on availability of ebooks that match libraries’ recent print book purchases

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

NetLibrary (Print 1 page at a time only – 1 sim. use)

MyILibrary (Print/Download various page sets

—in beta)

Some PublisherPackages

(No DRM on Publisher site)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 book purchases vs. current 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, and Call number

How many ebooks are available?

What is the age profile of aggregated ebooks?

1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 20080

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

40000

45000# of Books per Decade or Year as of 10-2008

EBRsubs

EBL

EBR

MyI

NetL

Aggregator Collection Age (2000s)

Titles in all 486884%

Titles in 3 Aggregators

3945718%

Titles in 2 Aggregators

4616921%

Unique to NetL90,82841%

Unique to MyI

12,4256%

Unique to EBL11524- 5%

Unique to-EBR8542 - 4%

How much overlap is there

between aggregator collections?

10/2008Total number of unique

books across collections =

221,591= Aggregated

Ebook Marketplace

What proportion of the marketplace is available from

each aggregator?Full Collection: 221,591 unique ebooks

2005 – 2007 Publication Years: 51,969 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

C; 17218

A; 9614

D; 42423

L; 32968

S; 6091

Library pBook Purchases: by Publication year

200820072006200520042003-earlier0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%

CADLS

Library pBook Purchases by Discipline

Unkno

wnArts

Gener

al

Human

ities

Scienc

e

Social

Scie

nces

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

CADLS

Library pBook Purchases: Overlap

C A D L S0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

OneTwoThreeFourFive

Matching library print purchases to eBook availability

• Compare 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

C A D L S0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

69.5%74.5%

67.8% 68.8% 68.3%

Library

2006

-200

7 pr

int p

urch

ases

no

t ava

ilab

le a

s eb

ooks

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%

Electronic availability of purchased books

EBL Ebrary Ebrary Sub MyILibrary NetLibrary0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%

OneTwoThreeFourFive

pBooks Matched v. Not Matched

What ebooks are aggregators providing that libraries don’t buy in print?

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

Do they differ by:• publisher?• subject?

eBook non-matches characteristics (Claremont only)

Publishers in Library List Books Cambridge Univ Press 337Oxford University Press 238Princeton University Press 196University of Chicago Press 178Ashgate 176Yale University Press 176Harvard University Press 173Routledge 171W.W. Norton & Company 152University of California Pr 132A.A. Knopf 124Palgrave Macmillan 118

Publishers in eBook List Books Routledge 18731

Wiley 10538

Springer 9938

Elsevier 6942

Oxford University Press 6506

Taylor & Francis 6332

Cambridge Univ Press 5112

McGraw-Hill 3875CRC Press 3601

Palgrave Macmillan 3333

HarperCollins 2893

SUNY Press 2891

Claremont Purchased print books not avail. electronically

Subject Areas Books Purchased Print only % Print only History, North America 761 546 72% Literary History & Collections 717 530 74% American Literature 667 519 78% Visual Arts (General) 655 610 93% Literature of Music 558 457 82% History, Asia. Middle East 514 390 76% Economic History (by Subject) 507 270 53% Theory & Practice of Education 468 331 71% English Literature 467 344 74% Romance Literatures 465 390 84% United States History 359 271 75% Painting 305 285 93%

Average +/- 95%CI 77.1 ± 6.8 %

Summary of results• Aggregator title lists are largely

unique (>50% available from only 1

aggregator)• Only 3 in 10 print titles purchased

by any individual library during 2006-2007 are available in the ‘eBook Aggregator marketplace’

• Initial observations: – many print university press titles

Claremont purchased are not available from eBook aggregators

– ebook availability varies across subjects

Main point: Supersede or Supplement?

• Can’d supersede: 70% of our print book purchases aren’t available as ebooks

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

Questions?

Jason & JohnNovember 6, 2008

Discussion points

• What are some potential explanations for the low match rates?

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

• How do these data affect your ebook purchasing strategy?

(Jason’s) Opinions• Purchasing & Hosting on 4 different

aggregators is not an attractive solution for users OR libraries

• It is unfortunate that the richest aggregator collection is also the least usable (NetLibrary, please liberalise your DRM agreements)!

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

• The best place to supersede right now is probably transformation of subject-by-publisher wide print standing orders to no-DRM direct publisher collections --especially in the disciplines where multi-author books are the norm