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Experimenting with patron‐led acquisition of Ebooks @ Ncl : letting the user decide
Jill Taylor‐Roe, Head of Liaison & Academic Services, Robinson LibraryNewcastle University
Context & Background ‐ why did we do it?
“ We need more books!”- but *which* books and *when?*
Aware of experiments in patron-led acquisitions in US research libraries
Opportunity to bid for pilot funding of £70,000 from Teaching & Learning Strategic Fund for Innovation
Pressure on library space
Concern that simply throwing more £ into buying what we *think* is needed is not an optimal solution
Key Criteria for our Patron‐led ebook experiment
•Must have sufficient critical mass to be worthwhile•Must be customisable •Must have fast and effective options to regulate spending and minimise risk •Must allow us to identify patrons and their schools •Must provide good management data so that we can analyse what has been purchased and evaluate the experiment •Ideally incorporates feedback mechanism so patrons can tell us what they think
EBL pilot: initial set up
January 2010PDD account set up with EBL ‐ to start 1st Feb. Minimum profiling ‐ excluded titles in subject we don’t teach, gen ref etc.Patron information tool set‐up to gather patron data
February 2010Over 112,000 catalogue records loaded into AlephLimit set at 3 STL's per day (beyond that requests were mediated)Mediation set at $30 per STLAuto‐purchase on 3rd STLMediated loans, if approved, were for 1 or 7 daysMediation carried out by Liaison Librarians
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wk2 wk4 wk6 wk8 wk10 wk12 wk14 wk16 wk18 wk20 wk22 wk24
Requ
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Weekly Usage Trend Feb‐July 2010
autopurchases
STL (Loans)
Steep rise first 3 weeks – users loved it!Max use/cost = early MarchMin use/cost = early April (vacation time)
Requests fell (from an unsustainable high) due to various intervention measures:From Week 6 ‐ patron loans reduced to 1 book per day (instead of 3) downloading turned off for non‐owned books (downloading always incurs a loan cost) ‐ can still read online for 5mins which incurs no cost. Autopurchase on 5th loan rather than3rdLoan costs made visible to readersWeek 13 – (May) reduced mediation trigger from $30 to $15 Week 14 ( May – all requests mediated ( 24hr turnaround) week 20 reprofiling of collection to weed out less academic content
Exam time = May/JuneDissertation time:
April/May Undergrads June > Sept for PGT
Easter Vac = wks 8/9Summer Vac = July‐Sept
Summary of Costs Feb‐July_2010 Summary of paid usage Feb‐July_2010
Browse Download Read Online
30314 3922 10073
Total Access by Type Feb‐July_2010
£37 270,13
£1 528,81£0,00£5 000,00£10 000,00£15 000,00£20 000,00£25 000,00£30 000,00£35 000,00£40 000,00
Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul
Total Costs by month Feb‐July_2010
Costs
3699
1470
1000
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4000
Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul
Total Loan+Purchase requests by month Feb‐July_2010
Requests
Month AUTOPURCH STL Grand Total
Feb £2,024.37 £9,824.16 £11,848.53
Mar £9,229.16 £27,499.77 £37,270.13
Apr £4,123.79 £13,106.83 £17,445.31
May £4,277.98 £9,390.23 £14,672.20
Jun £290.92 £2,941.80 £3,232.72
Jul £296.17 £1,232.64 £1,528.81
Totals £20,242.39 £63,995.43 £85,997.70
Month AUTOPURCH STL Grand Total
Feb 37 1323 1360Mar 127 3567 3694Apr 64 1952 2016May 59 1297 1356Jun 3 350 353Jul 3 144 147
Grand Total 256 7310 7566
£5 025,98
£62,17
£9 815,55
£543,22
£0,00
£2 000,00
£4 000,00
£6 000,00
£8 000,00
£10 000,00
£12 000,00
wk2
wk3
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wk12
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£
Weekly Cost Trend Feb‐July_2010
Autopurchases
STL (Loans)
Initial expenditure levels were unsustainable. Loan costs are main drain on budget.Outright Purchase costs are acceptable (cf print).Increased loan/purchase in May due to exams/projects.Mediation measures seem to reduce service load significantly even during peak periods. Semester 1 will be the next big test.
In this snapshot of the top 10 publishers for outright purchase, T&F are dominant.
No surprises that the major academic publishing houses are prominent, indicating scholarly content is what students value.
Total costs for Autopurchase = £20,242. Top 10 publishers account for 75.5% of all autopurchases.
Taylor & Francis/Routledge
40%
Cambridge University Press
11%
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.15%
Elsevier10%
Sage Publications Ltd.6%
Palgrave Macmillan5%
Emerald Group Publishing
4%Informa Healthcare
3% Springer3%
Edinburgh University Press3%
Top 10 EBL Publishers by Cost Feb‐July_10
%
Autopurchases
Taylor & Francis/Routledge
42%
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.13%
Elsevier12%
Cambridge University Press8%
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
5%
Springer5%
Oxford University Press4%
Sage Publications Ltd.4%
Ashgate Publishing Ltd4%
Palgrave Macmillan3%
Top 10 EBL publishers by Cost Feb‐July_10
%
STL Loans
Very similar trend to purchases. T&F are again dominant in this snapshot of top publishers for the loan category.
One surprising feature is the popularity of Elsevier – this is not reflected in our traditional e‐book portfolio.
Total cost of STL is £63,995, and the top ten publishers here captured 75% of the total spend.
Status and School # TitlesMasters 39ECLSMasters 37Modern LanguagesUndergrad 32MASTUndergrad 31GeographyMasters 30ECLSMasters 27NUBSUndergrad 25AFRDPhD 24LawMasters 23ECLSUndergrad 23SociologyMasters 21Medical SciencesMasters 20ECLSPhD 19EECEUndergrad 19GeographyMasters 19ECLSUndergrad 19AFRDUndergrad 18AFRD
Top users
Who’s using the service? main users seem to beTaught Masters and Undergrad students Academic Staff do not seem to be big users of the service … so far.
Top Schools by use Top Schools by cost Ranking of Schools by usage and costs helps to assess performance and shape management decisions.
So far the stats suggests that Humanities and Social Sciences are the dominant users, which echoes current print book use.
Compare this to e‐journals where Sci, Eng and Medical schools tend to be the primary users.
This snapshot suggests that usage during the summer vacation is mostly due to taught post‐grads – who have dissertations to complete by September.
Further analysis will be undertaken in Summer 2011
Increasing summer vacation use is one way of improving the overall ROI for e‐resources.
Summer Vac usage by name and schoolCount of Title Course
xxx 31MA Latin Am Interdisc Studies (FT)
Modern Languagesxxx 10 MA Applied Linguistics
ECLSxxx 8 MSc International Economics
Libraryxxx 8 PgC Research Training (PT)
NUBSxxx 8 MA Applied Linguistics & TESOL
ECLSxxx 7 MA Media & Journalism
Arts and Culturesxxx 7 Int PhD Edu & Applied Ling
ECLSxxx 6 MA Media & Public Relations
Arts and Cultures
xxx 6MEd (International Dev and Educ
ECLSxxx 6 MA CCC & International Mgmt
ECLSxxx 6 Reader in Caribbean History
Historical Studiesxxx 6 MSc Computing Science
Computing Science
xxx 6MA CCC & International Relations
ECLS
Summer Vacation Usage: 2010
So what did we learn?
• Service was extremely popular• Humanities & Social Sciences predominated – BUT all schools used the service•PVC Teaching and Learning ‐ very supportive•Initial usage levels unsustainable ‐ we had to refine the service• EBL were very supportive throughout•Pressure to launch before National Student Satisfaction Survey (NSS) in Feb meant little time for staff training •Initial project funding required top‐up before financial yr end
Challenges moving forward : How to manage demand so that allocated funds last a full academic yearHow to transition from pilot to sustainable service model – blend of patron‐led with more traditional acquisitions policy
• £86,000 spent in six months• 7,500 purchases and loans• 30,000 browsed titles• Ave cost autopurchase = £69• Ave cost STL Loan = £7.50• Taylor and Francis = Top Publisher• Humanities and Social Sciences dominate usage rankings
So how have things gone in 2010/11?
•£130K spent
•10,000 ebooks loaned
•500 ebksbought
£0,00
£5 000,00
£10 000,00
£15 000,00
£20 000,00
£25 000,00
£30 000,00
£35 000,00
£40 000,00 Total EBL spend @ Ncl from project initiation
usage increases after jan exams
taught PGs still working in the summer
usage rises at start of academic year
usage soaredafter initial launch
and falls off after summer exams
The Longer view:
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aug sep oct nov dec jan feb mar apr may jun jul
Total EBL spend by academic yr
2010
2011
project began Feb 2010
Mar peak muchlower in 2011
Comparing this year with last
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no of post purchase uses of patron selected books
no of uses
EBooks selected by users this academic yr are attracting repeated use
Food for thought...
Feb 2010 – April 2011 – over 12,000 people used the service
If we had bought outright everything that had been loaned –would have spent over £640,000
If we had secured access via ILL ‐ it would have cost circa £250,000
Early evidence suggests that there is significant repeat use of patron selected purchases
Good VFM?
How have print loans performed?
No obvious decline in print usage , tho print dipped in March whereas e peaked. Main impact has been decline in ILL ‐ we have spent £10K less than last year
What do the users think?
“I found this very helpful. I’ve not borrowed an ebook before, just borrow the odd one, which isn’t always satisfactory. I can imagine that an eversion would be great for people with out easy access to the libraries on campus” Lecturer, Med Sciences
“Thank you for approving my loan request. There were two extremely relevant chapters for my dissertation” MSc Student, Biomed Scis
“This is cool. Much neater than Google books, methinks” Law Student “
“just to let you know that the new ebooks package is excellent. Loads of really useful titles for media, journalism and PR. I do hope that we will be able to keep access to it.” Lecturer, Education, Communication & Language Studies
“All of these loans that have been provided have been really useful for me, it should be something done more often!” History student
“I have enjoyed the experience – although e‐books demand a different way of reading” Lecturer, Maths
“Lecturer said she had noticed that her students had hardly complained about problems getting hold of books this semester whereas it has always been a big issue ‐ and she thinks EBL is largely responsible for the improvement” ‐ Arts Liaison Librarian
But some folk were less positive…
“ I have found the ebooks experience deeply unsatisfactory in terms of usability and user-friendliness as it does not suit my learning needs as a resource ( as someone who works 4 days a week and has children and very little time to study! )” PG student, HASS
“For some reason I was unable to print any page even though I am allowed to print around 20% of the book content.” PG Student, SAgE
“It’s a bit fiddly changing from text to pdf to cut and paste or print the odd page” Lecturer, Maths
“I have just tried this with a research methods book as an online inspection copy… complete nightmare at first, but it seemed to work in the end.” Lecturer, Law
“$120 dollars seems extravagant when it only costs £10 for print in Blackwell’s”
So did we make the right decision???
Yes but ..... more work needed before we can embed this as a service ...
e.g. We like to learn more about what the users selected –Was it reading list titles or wider reading?Did we have print in stock?Has the service benefited particular subject areas/types of user?Can we quantify savings in other areas such as ILL?Has there been a decline in user comments about lack of books?
Even more work needed....
How does patron selected material perform after purchase? Is it used again? ( Initial analysis suggests yes it is) How does this compare with library selected purchases? Is Just in Time provision providing better vfm than Just in Case? How can we market this model effectively in the new fees climate ? How can we blend this approach with more traditional purchasing models?
Concluding thoughts....
Scary at times, but we’re very glad we did it ... Funding secure for next academic yr – so we will continue the serviceNeed to develop new value measures Need to determine how such an approach can work in a sustainable way in fiscally challenging times Keen to work with EBL to improve management reportingLooking at adding in other vendors Possibility of National JISC deal for patron led e‐books
For interesting debate on PDA – go to: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org
http://www.ncl.eblib.com/EBLWeb/patron
Ebooks @NCL
Jill Taylor‐Roe, Head of Liaison & Academic Services, Robinson LibraryJill.Taylor‐[email protected]
Thank you for your Attention!
