Hazel Woodward (speaker), Helen Henderson (speaker)

1. informationpower
Who are the Winners?
Ebook consortial purchasing
Hazel Woodward & Helen Henderson
Information Power Ltd.
Presentation to the Charleston Conference, 7th November, 2013
informationpower

2. Ebook consortial purchasing
 Consortia worldwide are struggling to find sustainable and
cost-effective business models for purchasing ebooks
 JISC Collection, the UK national consortia, has had some
successes with the purchase of ebook collections, but less so
with individual titles
 This pilot is an attempt to trial a specific business model for
individual titles, changing publisher driven selection to patron
driven selection
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3. JISC Collections (UK)
Ebook Consortia Pilot Project
 Based on a consortial business model trialled by Max Planck
Institute (Germany) and CBUC (Spain)
 No data analysed by MPI & CBUC
 JISC Collections (UK national consortia) set up one year pilot 20122013
 Engineering ebooks chosen for pilot
 Libraries to purchase ebooks
 IPL, as Project Manager, to collect and analyse purchase & usage
data
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4. The (very simple) business model
 Consortium of 6 academic libraries with large Engineering
Faculties
 6 publishers of engineering books (some large engineering
publishers excluded as libraries had existing big deals)
 Whenever one of the libraries purchased an ebook, all libraries
had access
 „Price multiplier‟ negotiated with each publisher. In the pilot this
was paid by JISC Collections. In a „real life‟ consortia it would
be split among the libraries
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5. Libraries & Publishers
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Cranfield University
Loughborough University
Newcastle University
Brunel University
University of Southampton
University of Liverpool
 Artech House
 Cambridge University Press (CUP)
 Institution of Engineering and
Technology (IET)
 Taylor & Francis (T&F)
 Wiley
 World Scientific Publishing (WSP)
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6. Implementation
(more challenging than expected!)
Hosting service
 Libraries consulted: took time to reach a consensus. (All used
multiple ebook aggregator platforms)
 Dawson Books (Dawsonera) chosen
 Negotiation & agreement: also took time
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7. Implementation
The ebooks
 Libraries slow to start ordering titles & requested title lists from
publishers
 Ebook title lists supplied by publishers
 Workflow issues for libraries & hosting service
 First orders placed December 2012
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8. Implementation
MARC Records
 Research by CIBER & JISC Collections has demonstrated that
MARC records in the OPAC are vital to discovery
 Delay in provision of MARC records to libraries at start of pilot
may have had a bearing on usage
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9. Finally… the pilot was up and running
 It had been hoped to run the pilot for a full academic fiscal
year
 In reality the pilot began in earnest in December 2012 & ran
until July 2013
 Books were being ordered and used
 COUNTER ebook usage statistics (BR1 & BR2) were being
collected
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10. So what were the findings (in a nutshell)
 Very high usage of books purchased
 98.6% of books were used by at least 1 library
 All libraries got more value than they purchased
 Percentage bought and not used by individual
library averaged 7% - very low compared to recent
PDA/evidence-based studies in Germany and the
USA which were closer to 85%
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11. Overall analysis
Library 1
Library 2
Library 6
Library 4
Library 5
Library 3
% bought
34%
25%
15%
13%
13%
0%
% used
95%
52%
42%
49%
27%
20%
% bought
% used but but not
not bought
used
61%
1%
27%
11%
26%
8%
35%
6%
15%
9%
100%
0%
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12. Purchase Analysis
Library 3
Library 6
Library 4
Library 2
Library 5
Library 1
No. of library’s
No. purchased No. used but purchases used
but not used not purchased
by others
72%
189%
94%
50%
218%
77%
43%
154%
100%
42%
305%
100%
4%
185%
85%
0%
250%
0%
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13. Value analysis
Library 3
Library 6
Library 4
Library 2
Library 5
Library 1
Value of
Value
library’s
purchased but Value used but purchases used
not used
not purchased
by others
77%
165%
105%
51%
176%
104%
49%
136%
100%
43%
396%
100%
4%
195%
118%
0%
2176%
0%
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14. Usage analysis
Library 4
Library 6
Library 5
Library 3
Library 2
Library 1
Use of
purchased
2246
1589
1491
320
252
0
Use of nonpurchased
4932
3532
1633
3828
48
1210
Use by others of
library’s
purchases
3753
3875
4675
1271
2497
0
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15. Publisher analysis
Publisher B
Publisher A
Publisher C
Publisher E
Publisher D
Publisher F
% of titles bought
8.1%
5.6%
2.4%
1.8%
1.3%
0.5%
Av accesses per book
2.6
2.5
2.7
2.8
2.5
1.5
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16. What did the librarians think of the pilot?
 5 out of the 6 libraries said they would be interested
in pursuing consortial ebook purchasing using this
business model
 In the light of the data they were pleased with both
the level of use of titles they had purchased, and
their use of titles purchased by other institutions
 They would be happy to put money into a consortial
„pot‟ to widen their access to ebook titles (funds
permitting)
 One librarian commented: “Increased access is the
real benefit and saving money is a bonus”
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17. What type of consortia?
 Librarians commented that the important factor
in a consortia is having synergy between the
libraries (e.g. research/ teaching focused)
 The majority favoured subject-based ebook
consortia
 The portfolio of publishers participating in the
consortia was very important
 Most favoured a minimum level of financial
commitment from participating libraries
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18. What did the publishers think?
 The majority of publishers were disappointed
with the sales figures
 However, on the whole, they were pleased and
very interested in the usage data
 An interesting finding from the pilot was that
none of the publishers examined ebook usage
in detail at company level (only ejournal usage)
 All publishers said that they only had access to
usage data from their own platform – ebook
aggregators did not supply them with usage
statistics
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19. What did the publishers think?
 In general, the smaller publishers were most
enthusiastic…”our role as a publisher is to get our
content out there…. we need to get our brand
noticed”
 All publishers commented that they needed to
protect the value of their titles
 Of the 3 larger publishers only one was positive
about the business model. However, they felt that a
variable price multiplier would be necessary to
enable them to offer both back list and current high
demand titles
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20. What alternative did publishers suggest?
 One publisher said they were very interested in
evidence based purchasing and would like JISC
Collections to pursue that model
 Another publisher stated that they did not like the
business model saying “it is not sustainable”
 They went on to say “we are keen to work with library
consortia but we don‟t like shared
ownership/collections… we would rather give a
discount”
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21. Who are the winners?
 Librarians. The majority felt that the business model worked well
and they got good value-for-money
 Publishers. Were not enthusiastic about the business model but
suffered no financial detriment
 The Consortia. Obtained valuable, unique data about the
business model & usage of the shared collection
 But the REAL WINNERS were the USERS who had access to much
more content… and used it!
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