JISC National E-Books Observatory Mark Carden, Ingram Digital With thanks to Prof. David Nicholas CIBER, UCL Centre for Publishing University College London

Distributing Digital Content © 2008 Ingram Industries Inc JISC National E-Books Observatory

Distributing Digital Content © 2008 Ingram Industries Inc Gap in our e-book knowledge Knowledge is mainly based on use of scientific e-journals by academics Know much less about behaviour of students, arts/humanities scholars and some social scientists – majority community E-journal stereotype may be wrong Need research into e-books

Distributing Digital Content © 2008 Ingram Industries Inc E-books: ready for lift-off? Offer condensed, distilled knowledge Books under-utilised because contents not digitally visible Students want small unit of information - chapters, paragraphs & sentences Good content and products available

Distributing Digital Content © 2008 Ingram Industries Inc The particular problem Demand for e-textbooks Publishers nervous about licensing e-textbooks through the library Librarians, aggregators & publishers unsure of most realistic and sustainable pricing and licensing models for providing students with access to e-books

Distributing Digital Content © 2008 Ingram Industries Inc The JISC experiment License some core e-texts books for all UK university libraries (120+) Selected 36 titles in 4 disciplines 2 academic years Cost of acquisition/licencing £600,000 Two platforms: MyiLibrary Wolters Kluwer Health Assess impact Transfer knowledge to stakeholders

Distributing Digital Content © 2008 Ingram Industries Inc Survey Over 120 participating universities 22,437 responses A geographical plot of IP addresses of responding institutions

Distributing Digital Content © 2008 Ingram Industries Inc 22,000 people cannot be wrong! E-books now embedded in scholarly information experience. 60%+ of scholars are already using e-books Demand for printed course texts exceeds their supply in the university library Low student content purchasing 5% of e-books students used paid for by themselves

Distributing Digital Content © 2008 Ingram Industries Inc 22,000 people cannot be wrong! Reading e-books exclusively from the screen is dominant preference for scholars of all age groups (53%) Short reading times less than ten minutes online: staff 35% students 23% " The sheer number of books is overwhelming; if I can look at them very quickly and get some very superficial knowledge of what is in them, it improves my scholarship, because in the back of my mind, these books already exist ”

Distributing Digital Content © 2008 Ingram Industries Inc 22,000 people cannot be wrong! Students used library services mostly from home (42% - women students 45%) Men more likely to use and buy e-books, and to read the whole book online

Distributing Digital Content © 2008 Ingram Industries Inc The technique: digital information footprints Information Seeking Characteristics Activity Metrics User Characteristics 1. Pages viewed 2. Full-text downloads 3. Sessions conducted 4. Site penetration 5. Time spent viewing 6. Time spent per session 7. Number of searches in a session 8. Number of repeat visits made 9. Number of journals used 10. Number of views per journal 1. Subject/ discipline 2. Academic status 3. Geographical location 4. Institution 5. Type of organization used to access the service 6. User demographics Type of content 1. Number of journals used in a session 2. Names of journals used 3. Subject of e-journal used 5. Age of journal used 6. Type of material viewed 7. Type of full-text view 8. Size of article used 9. Publication status of article Searching style 1.Search approach adopted 2. Number of searches conducted in a session 3. Number of search terms used in search 4. Form of navigation Next level of analysis

Distributing Digital Content © 2008 Ingram Industries Inc Round-up Seen enough already to know going to prove very popular Information seeking different from e-journals busier sessions older content viewed more use at weekends lower use of search facility The JISC observatory is a huge step forward in research

Distributing Digital Content © 2008 Ingram Industries Inc JISC National E-Books Observatory