Facing Faculty Fears about Embracing the E-Book: Communication Strategies for

Liaison Librarians

23rd North Carolina Serials Conference

Ellen Daugman & Carol Cramer

March 14, 2014

E-book Purchase Options

• Single Title• Collection Purchases • Subscription Access • Demand-Driven (Patron-Driven)

Acquisition a.k.a. “DDA” or “PDA”

E-books at WFU

• Collection/Single Title: ~2,500 e-books purchased one-by-one or in small collections

• Subscription: Oxford Reference Online Premium is only subscription e-book service (~200 titles)

• Over 215,000 DDA e-books (provider: EBL)• [Over 300,000 e-books from historical primary source

collections (EEBO, ECCO, etc.)]

• Excepting historical research, DDA is the typical e-book experience for WFU patrons.

It all started with Philosophy...

Fear #1

Lots of e-books in the catalog...

Ergo…

OMG the library isn’t buying print anymore!!

Q.E.D.

Fear #2: E-books are fluff

German & Russian

Invited to departmental meeting

Explained pros & cons of e-books and our DDA plan

Emphasized use abroad, e.g. Vienna program

Addressing Fear #1

• We load over 170,000 records for e-books that we

haven’t paid for into the catalog.• The first 5 minutes of use are free.• After the free period, we pay a rental fee for the first 3 uses.• Upon the fourth use, we buy the book.

• In FY12, this program cost $26,507 vs. $554,631

spent on 15,316 print books. ($77K so far in FY13)• Paid for by centralized ZSR funding.

Addressing Fear #2

Some titles that have been used:• Late-Medieval German Women's Poetry: Secular and

Religious Songs (ZSR has print, too)• Middlebrow Literature and the Making of German-Jewish

Identity (ZSR has print)• German: A Linguistic Introduction (e-only)• Dostoevsky and the Russian People (ZSR has print)• Czech: An Essential Grammar (e-only)• Italo-Celtic Origins and Prehistoric Development of the

Irish Language (e-only)

Results: Too Positive

For Vienna, they want books that the current

e-books program cannot provide!

Classical Languages: Clash of the Titans

Two core values in conflict:

1. Print is important

2. Our library collection must be expanded

Strategy: One-on-one session with Chair

• Explain how our e-books work

• Sit back and wait• Send usage reports to Chair

(filtered to relevant call numbers)

Results: One Year Later

“I like the "on demand" purchases – where we have the electronic availability for monographs and then the library purchases when use gets to a certain level. That seems an efficient set-up and it has been beneficial to Classics in managing its fund.”

Expanded access wins!

Use of PA (Latin/Greek lit) heavy compared to dept. size

Social Sciences

Communication and Psychology: each overwhelmed with DDA choices and e-friendly

One dept. voluntarily gave back funding; the other is considering it.

The Constituency

English Department: 39 faculty members, of whom nearly half are lecturers, visiting or assistant professors

Impetus for Action: Fires of Alarm in the Inbox

“I'm surprised to see that we only have this book – an Oxford University press book! – in ebook form….When did we stop getting OUP US books in hard copy?....Can we order a hardcover copy for me, rush?”

Selection Quandaries

When a record for an EBL DDA book is already in the catalog, should I simply move on to the next title? When should I order print books that duplicate electronic books?

Victorian Jewelry, Identity, and the Novel: Prisms of Culture (Ashgate)“alt-ed EBL manual DDA record sent”

Fealty to the Printed Book

Traditional vehicle of scholarly communication

AND

Embodiment of works of the imagination and intellect

Look What Happened to Print Journals

2008 vs. 2014

2008

2014

Role of the Liaison: To Walk the Fine Line

• Support and advocate for faculty’s preferences

• Cognizant of library’s perspectives and pressures

• Aware of students’ research crises

Face the Negatives

• Not print! Print lends itself better to close, analytical scholarly reading

• Automatic purchase trigger is for electronic format only; no format query

• Potential for duplication• Cumbersome use: e-books can load

slowly or one page at a time

But Consider All Aspects (Even the Positive)

Faculty concerns:• Access to books far beyond what our

limited budgets could purchase (including titles from top academic presses)

• No expense incurred if titles are not used (50% non-use statistics for print)

• E-books may assist with grading papers

And (An Appeal) on Behalf of the Students

• Immediate access to books for students operating in very constrained time frames; book recall and ILL are NOT options

• Simultaneous use (appeal to consider e-books where there’s high student-per-book pressure, e.g. course reserves and study abroad)

• Easing of space issues in the stacks; may create opportunities for more multi-use spaces

• Exposed to larger expanse of scholarly monographs than would encounter in print-limited catalog

• Reference books and edited titles analogous to journal articles

Reiterate Reassurances: Compassionate Policies

• Will purchase print on request even if the library has the e-book

• ILL will request print even if the library has the e-book

• Departmental fund is not being cut

“Do You Use the EBook Library Offerings in the ZSR Library Catalog?”

I have not noticed the EBL DDA listings

Never

Sometimes, but for browsing, not reading

Sometimes, for browsing and reading

Often

5 (25%)

0 (0%)

8 (40%)

6 (30%)

1 (5%)

““For which of the Following Uses do you Prefer Print Books to E-books?”

Reading single-author scholarly monographs

Consulting Reference books

Reading selected essays from edited collections

Course Reserves

Classroom/Student Use

Reading books published by “top” presses (e.g., CUP, OUP)

Reading books published by less prestigious presses

Books I recommend to students for their research

Books I use in study abroad houses

Books I would like to use while on leave

Other (please specify):

17 (85%)

6 (30%)

16 (80%)

5 (25%)

11 (55%)

15 (75%)

13 (65%)

12 (60%)

2 (10%)

9 (45%)

1 (5%)

“For which of the Following Uses do you Prefer E-books to Print Books?”

Reading single-author scholarly monographs

Consulting Reference books

Reading selected essays from edited collections

Course Reserves

Classroom/Student Use

Reading books published by “top” presses (e.g., CUP, OUP)

Reading books published by less prestigious presses

Books I recommend to students for their research

Books I use in study abroad houses

Books I would like to use while on leave

Other (please specify):

2 (12%)

11 (65%)

3 (18%)

8 (47%)

3 (18%)

0 (0%)

1 (6%)

4 (24%)

6 (35%)

3 (18%)

2 (12%)

Additional Questions or Comments?

1. “ebooks are impossible to work with and u may as well shut down the library if u are going that route”

2. “To some degree my answers completely depend on the interface. I love having ebooks when it means that I can search them. It’s also nice to be able to read them on my Kindle. I was at [xxx] until this year, though, and I hated their ebooks because I had to click and wait through a slow loading process on every page, I couldn’t read anywhere but a computer iPad screen…and there wasn’t a helpful search function or an easy way to navigate to particular chapters. Those are things that make a huge difference!”

3. “For teaching purposes, hard copies provide greater opportunities for close-textual analysis. I like the convenience of the ebooks, but they are less effective for my research and teaching.”

Follow-up Questions

• Economics of E vs P (cost to library)• Specifics of simultaneous use (number of

students in course)• Ubiquity (are most books now e-available?)• Generational acceptance (“younger users like

me”)• Citation (cite as E or P “as though I had the

physical book in hand?”)• Tech: Adobe vs Corel for annotation of PDFs

After-Effects: The Glitches that Corroborate

“Here's another argument against eBooks....

The library does not have it in hard copy – once upon a time we would have….

I can't express my frustration....I can't remember a single time in my life that I've pulled a book down off the shelf to discover that the wrong cover had been put on a different book.”

Love in an Ambivalent Climate

“I've gotten used to using Ebooks and like them just fine. It would be great if you could acquire ebooks for early modern/Shakespeare, but does that mean we won't see them in print form?”

“I really use them a lot and “keep” them in my favorites. It's like having them in my office, only better because they're better organized.”

And a few months later: “By the way, I LOVE the electronic book holdings! I use them all the time.”

Resolution of Sorts

• Order print for all titles recommended by the library rep in GOBI alerts (multi-disciplinary)

• Note publisher• Note subject areas of e-averse

faculty

Modest Proselytizing

Incrementally reach captive faculty audience in bibliographic instruction sessions, specifically addressing e-books: • Show how to use • Ask how students feel about e-books;

acknowledge ambivalence• Note advantages to students (without pressuring

to use e-books)

Photo Credits

Creative Commons Licensed• Philosophers: Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P.

flickr.com/photos/paullew/2640312948• Cotton Candy: Nadia Prigoda-Lee

flickr.com/photos/the_girl/4280042/• Greek Vase: Dan Diffendale

flickr.com/photos/dandiffendale/3388342523 • Victorian Jewelry, Identity, and the Novel: Prisms of Culture.

find.zsr.wfu.edu/Record/2641186

Others: Steve Cramer and Carol Cramer or courtesy Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Wake Forest University

Contact Us

Ellen Daugman daugman@wfu.edu

Carol Cramer cramercj@wfu.edu