Jens Vigen, CERN CESID visit 12 May 2006 Livres electroniques dans un contexte des bibliotheques scientifiques Ebooks and interlibrary loan An academic centric model for lending

CERN … where the Web was born! Grid : a "work in progress" Most important: –a laboratory for 7000 physicists –a dissemination point for scientific knowledge

Daily life = daily problems Physicist & library user >> Any ebooks around? What about e-prints?

Daily life = daily challenges Physicist & librarian >> Hybrid environment Still no ebooks to see...

“Unstable" community An ever moving and moaning population –2500 international staff –6500 visiting scientists representing 500 universities and over 80 nationalities Variating needs over the year –‘Invasion’ of students in the summers Variating needs over time –Construction versus operation Often "all or nothing" is what is available...

Innovative ILL service Complementing missing books from second hand bookshops –BookFinder.com & AddAll.com Buying recent books off the shelf –Amazon.com Library patron: why don't you try ebooks? –From where …?

Expensive or for free …? …a nightmare or an opportunity? Amazon – Search Inside Google Book Search Gallica Commercial publishers

Individual publishers Limited to only their titles and have to deal with many different companies

Aggregators One company, multi-publisher, they offer different sales and usage models

Project Gutenberg Tends to only be out of print books, not always good quality scanning Free

Cost benefits moving to ebooks Often cheaper than its printed counterpart ILL costs – ~ US$ in mediated borrowing costs ILL trends –article requests in free fall –book requests remain stable EBL is proving to be an alternative to ILL!

OPAC - MARC records fed to local catalogue –Purchased ebooks or short-term circulation –Full text search, online browse, download Access for authenticated users –Rules for access - mediated or non-mediated Link to ebooks via proprietary linking software (Go Direct/SFX) CERN’s portal to ebooks

Timeliness – Non-mediated = minutes Cost – staff costs, photocopying, supplies and shipping fees. No damage, loss or late return Lending Library Costs – Save staff costs, supplies and postage. Book is never unavailable Patron Satisfaction – patrons can ‘try before they buy’ Short-term circulation benefits

Conclusion First real tests have been very promising ….. A hybrid model for ebooks is evolving to provide a "just in case "principle, that will give users their documents "just in time"