Providing e-textbooks for students: Acquisitions and workflow issues. Beth Bernhardt Assistant Dean for Collection Management and Scholarly Communications UNC Greensboro
Background UNCG received a grant from the State Library of North Carolina that will aid students at East Carolina University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro by reducing their costs for required textbooks. Fall Semester we purchased approximately 70 e-books for the cost of $8,757.65. The total potential savings for students (if all of them didn't purchase the textbook) would be $109,191.49
Collaborated with Bookstore Ask for the list as soon as deadline for adoption has passed Ask for updates each week
Spreadsheet is a mess
Searching Searched catalog to see if we own the e-book Fall 2016: we searched over 2,000 titles Searched in GOBI, our library’s wholesaler website e-book availability platform allows unlimited or nonlinear multiple users
Criteria for purchase Publisher and edition match Platform allows unlimited user access Allow download and printing of book chapters Class size - We want to help more students Price - Some ebooks are reasonably priced, others are not. Funding comes from the grant plus some matching library funds.
Workflow Order is placed with the vendor/publisher Emails with links are received by the cataloger and acquisitions staff Cataloger then adds the e-books to the Knowledge Base Acquisition staff then pays the invoice Acquisition staff checks to make sure the link is active Acquisition staff then emails the faculty member and adds links to the libguide
Post Purchase – Example Email Dr. _______________ I just wanted to let you know that the library has the following assigned textbooks available through our e-book collections. If you have students that can't afford to purchase the textbooks this would be a good alternative. THR201 - Clean House and Other Plays - https://libproxy.uncg.edu/login?url=http://site.ebrary.com/lib/uncgreen/Top?id=10323632 THR201 - Buried Child https://libproxy.uncg.edu/login?url=http://www.aspresolver.com/aspresolver.asp?NADR;PL009826 THR201 - Backwards and Forwards - Library is ordering it. THR201 - Six degrees of separation https://libproxy.uncg.edu/login?url=http://www.aspresolver.com/aspresolver.asp?NADR;PL010814 THR201 - Laramie Project https://libproxy.uncg.edu/login?url=http://www.aspresolver.com/aspresolver.asp?NADR;PL010061
Post-Purchase In the Fall, we sent 258 links Professors overwhelmingly happy and excited:
Libguide
Lessons learned Get the bookstore spreadsheet as soon as possible. Accurate and complete list from the bookstore is still a struggle. Wait a few days after receiving the link from the vendor. Working off one spreadsheet in Google Docs is way more efficient Make sure the links work before sending out emails. A canned response email is your friend when emailing over 100 faculty
Questions? Beth Bernhardt Assistant Dean for Collection Development and Scholarly Communications UNC Greensboro Beth_Bernhardt@uncg.edu 336-256-1210