JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 1

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 2 Textbooks wanted Libraries are demanding e-text books Publishers do not want to sell them Why? E-books free at the point of use might mean no print sales to students

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 3 What the librarians told us Too expensive: E-book pricing models are not satisfactory (64%) Not the right type of e-books: There is too little choice of e-book titles (62%)

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 4 What we are doing 1.license collections of e-books that are highly relevant 2.four discipline areas: –Business and Management studies –Engineering –Medicine (not mental health or nursing) –Media Studies 3.evaluate the use of the e-books through deep log analysis 4.understand user behaviour 5.understand the impact of free at the point of use

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 5 e-books we licensed Media studies: 7 e-books Medical: 10 e-books Business and Management studies: 5 e-books Engineering: 14 e-books 36 e-books in total! Is that all?

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 6 National observatory MyiLibrary Ovid76% 47%

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 7 National engagement 12 workshops 250 librarians from 131 institutions

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 8 Librarians views I believe that my library should cover the costs to provide students with access to their course texts online, free at the point of use. –90% of librarians agreed with this statement I believe that my library should provide students with access to their course texts online, but that the costs should be shared between the library, the department and the student. –7% of librarians agreed with this statement I believe that my library should provide students with access to their course texts online, but that the library should not have to pay and students should be charged. –3% of librarians agreed with this statement

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 9 What the study is doing Asking users what they think they do Analysis of raw server log data– finding out what users actually do Final report – what they actually do and what libraries and publishers need to do

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 10 User Survey Nationwide coverage An initial benchmark of the academic population: what they think they do >22,437 responses (1 March) 123 universities 89.1% completion rate Representative sample Largest e-book survey ever?

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 11 Findings 1 Survey confirms bottlenecks in the system –21.8% of students `dissatisfied or `very dissatisfied with library provision of printed course textbooks –around half of teachers report regular complaints about library provision –65.5% in media studies! High levels of interest in e-books –60% of the academic population is already using e-books –especially popular with men and postgraduate students Low student content purchasing intentions JISC Project texts (only): – student purchasing intentions appear low (3.1%) – there is much reliance here on library copies (35.8%) –multiple readership (sharing with a friend) (40%) This is not a generalisable finding to all e-books.

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 12 What they say they do Screen reading or print In spite of a general presumption more than half of all users say they read e-books from a screen, even in the case of those aged Is this is a red herring? –Reading from the screen 62.6% say they read the contents of the e-book from the screen –Only 6.4% say they print it out –54.3% students say they dip in and out This has big implications for publishers! Role of the physical or virtual library Physical library: 45.2% students go every week Virtual library: 43.8% student go every week Access from outside the campus Students and staff, but especially women students, value the convenience of being able to access library services from home: 41.6% access the virtual library from home(44.3% female, 36.8% males)

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 13 How they say they find the books Discovering e-book content Catalogue entries and links from the library web site are very powerful determinants of e-book take-up, as confirmed again here. 31% of students use the library website 23% of students use the library catalogue 19.3% of students find out about the books from their tutor This is why we need good MARC Records and persistent URLs and ISBNs for e-books! – It needs another presentation to tell you about all the issues weve discovered about the implementation of standards (or the lack of)!

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 14 Findings so far Deep Log Analysis of MyiLibrary Some initial findings

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 15 Type of page viewed: all books

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 16 The changing landscape: students Power browsing (skimming materials) Horizontal research (shallow) Bouncing (spending only a few minutes looking at materials) Behaviour not limited to the so-called Google Generation

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 17 Whats next? If we behave differently in the virtual world does this impact on our buying behaviour in the physical world? Do publishers need to make different types of books for the virtual world? Is it time for a new formula for an electronic book? Are our behaviours driven by physical capacity – in the physical world books take up space and it is difficult to have lots of books at once – they are heavy and take up space – we are tortoises In the virtual world we can be caterpillars – munching through lots of stuff! Are we taking lots of redundant structures into the virtual world because that is what we learned in the physical world? Should we have e-books at all – or just databases of stuff?

JISC Collections 24-Apr-14 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 18 Thank You! Questions? All reports and information available at: