1. JISC E-books UK Roadshow

2. JISC E-books UK Roadshow
Workshop Agenda
Update on the project
JISC E-books UK Roadshow
Group activity
Results of the first user survey
Any thoughts?
Good afternoon, my name is Caren Milloy and I am project manager of the JISC national e-books observatory project.
In this hour I am briefly going to give you an update on the project, the recent roadhsow and then we will be spending a bit of time doing a activity and then we will move on to look at the user survey results, which I will explain more about later on.

3. JISC E-books UK Roadshow
The national e-books observatory
Libraries represent a completely different route to market for e-book publishers and the book selling chain changes quite dramatically in the digital arena. Currently no one knows what will be the most appropriate models as there is just not enough evidence of exactly how students will use e-books if they are made freely available through the library.
This is why publishers' have been slow to make their textbooks available online, but to move the market forward the JISC e-books working group commission A Feasibility Study on the Acquisition of E-books in Higher Education and the role of the JISC to which I am sure many of you responded. The study looked at the acquisition of TEXTBOOKS by HE libraries and explored what the role of the JISC might be in a market that has traditionally sold direct to the user.

4. JISC E-books UK Roadshow
Why the project?
E-book pricing models are not satisfactory (64%)
There is too little choice of e-book titles (62%)
E-book access models are not satisfactory (53%)
Publishers are not making the right textbooks electronically available on the right terms
Different selling chain
What business models? What licensing models?
Don’t know enough about e-book users
I don’t want to spend very long on why we did the project as most of you are publishers and hopefully know about it. Simply put, the project was started to gather evidence to inform the development of future business and licensing models that would be sustainable, affordable and based on exactly how students will use e-books if they are made freely available through the library.
The Feasibility study showed that libraries were not satisfied with the provision of course texts in particular and due to the levels of demand they were keen that someone took the lead……
JISC Collections to take the lead and initiate a new project to gather information about users in order to inform the future creation of business models and licensing models that are sustainable…..

5. JISC E-books UK Roadshow
Project Aims
license collections of e-books that are highly relevant to UK higher education taught course students in four discipline areas:
Business and Management studies
Engineering
Medicine (not mental health or nursing)
Media Studies
evaluate the use of the e-books through deep log analysis and to asses the impact of the ‘free at the point of use’ e-books upon publishers, aggregators and libraries
transfer knowledge acquired in the project to publishers, aggregators and libraries to help stimulate an e-books market that has appropriate business and licensing models
Most of you here are participating in the project, but for those who are not let me just briefly take you through the aims the project:
license for two year only collections of e-books that are highly relevant to UK higher education taught course students in four discipline areas:
Business and Management studies
Engineering
Medicine (not mental health or nursing)
Media Studies
The project will evaluate the use of the e-books through deep log analysis. The deep log data will provide quantitative information about user behaviours and patterns of use. This will be supplemented by qualitative data from user surveys to explain the patterns of use.
Knowledge acquired in the project will be transferred to publishers, aggregators and libraries and internationally to help stimulate an e-books market that has appropriate and flexible business and licensing models.

6. JISC E-books UK Roadshow
Why the DLA study?
map the virtual user in real time so we can see the impacts very quickly and make changes according to the data – if we see that the users are not using the e-books we can find out why and make appropriate changes.
allow us to base future decisions on real data, on a real understanding of what our users needs are.
identify best practice in terms of promotion, discovery, access models – institutions can experiment themselves with different promotional methods and watch the effects.
opportunity to get the business, licensing and pedagogic models for e-books right from the very start, rather than seek to review and correct with the benefit of hindsight.
allow us to really connect with the users as knowledge of what they are doing, who they are, how they use e-books and what they want will improve the services provided to them
The DLA study will for the first time create a national evidence base that will allow us to really understand our users. The DLA study will…….

7. JISC E-books UK Roadshow
Where we are now
MyiLibrary
75%
74%
40%
Ovid
So where are we now?
Since the launch of the e-book collections, we have had 124 HE institutions subscribe to the MyiLibrary collection, that’s 74 % of all UK HE institutions and we have had 77 HE institutions subscribe to the Wolters Kluwer Ovid collection which is 46% of all HE. These numbers are excellent, even better than we expected. We received around 70 institutional responses to the consultation so we were expecting a number similar to that. What is interesting is that institutions that we did not expect to sign up as they do not have courses in business, medicine, media studies or engineering have done so. This shows just how keen everyone is to understand how their users are finding, evaluating and using e-books through the DLA Study which is running for the whole of this year.

8. JISC E-books UK Roadshow
Don’t

9. Librarians and their views
JISC E-books UK Roadshow
Librarians and their views
12 workshops
250 librarians
from 131 institutions
Each workshop invited discussions around business and licensing models and the drivers required to reach a future utopia in e-textbook provision.
Well attended

10. Librarians and their views
JISC E-books UK Roadshow
Librarians and their 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
At the workshops the librarians had to pick a corner that they felt represented their view of the library in the future of e-textbooks…..
The result of this is the creation of a new strand of business model experiments…..
Several interesting business and licensing models were discussed at the workshops, some of which are already being used by aggregators and publishers. Even though one of the core aims of the national e-books observatory project is to gather an evidence base to inform future business and licensing models, it does not prevent us from exploring the pros and cons of different models. For example, if the national e-books observatory project highlights that students simply dip in and out and spend very little time in an e-book, then a model based on usage or time might be appropriate and affordable for institutions. How each pricing model is administered and managed has major implications on the institution and we may want to consider how a library might manage the workflows and processes involved.

11. What is your utopia for the future of e-textbooks?
JISC E-books UK Roadshow
What is your utopia for the future of e-textbooks?
The textbook should be in whatever form staff and students require, at anytime, in any format. You only have to buy it once and you always get multiple concurrent usage. There is an automatic free replacement of new editions and the old edition is placed in a central archive accessible for free by all education institutions. You can choose what platform you want to access the titles on but all titles will be available on all platforms. All platforms will have the same adopted standards and accessible versions will be available for all titles and audio versions. Staff and students can personalise the functionality of the platforms and integrate e-books with their VLE’s easily and quickly. Everything will have excellent metadata and everything will be interoperable, seamless and easy to use.
Librarians were invited to……create their utopias, here are some….
At each workshop of the JISC E-books UK Roadshow attendees were split into groups and asked to devise their utopia for the future of e-textbooks and identify the changes, which would need to take place to enable their utopias to be reached. Many of the utopias identified in the workshop match the vision of the e-books working group. They also match the 8 key challenges in the ‘Feasibility study on the acquisition of e-books in HE and the role of JISC’.
The utopias that the librairans devised were very intresting, some being really crazy and some being quite down to earth. Here is an example of three:

12. What is your utopia for the future of e-textbooks?
JISC E-books UK Roadshow
What is your utopia for the future of e-textbooks?
The e-book in the future will be content aggregated from a variety of formats and with a multi functional purpose that is not centred around reading but around interactivity with the learner – the aim being to provide the learner with all their content needs, in a way that suits their learning styles, the assessment requirements of the course they are on and the personalised, easy to use interface that fits with their lifestyles.

13. What is your utopia for the future of e-textbooks?
There will be an internet price comparison website with a checklist of business and licensing options for librarians to choose from. You will simply select what you want, on what platform, add it to your shopping cart and directly download the quality assured metadata (that is available in the same place) into the library catalogue. The interface will be standardised so staff and students know how to use it and the terms and conditions of use will all be the same too.

14. What is your utopia for the future of e-textbooks?
All e-textbooks will be open access or part open access!!!

15. JISC E-books UK Roadshow
Group Activity
At each workshop, after coming up with their utopias, the librarians were asked to come up with their top 5 drivers that would help reach their utopias……
I have identified the 10 most popular drivers and ranked them according to the number of times they were mentioned at the workshops. I would like you, in your groups, to stick the drivers on the purple sheet in the same ranked order….essentially which drivers do you think librarians said were the most important out of the top 10?
The group that gets it right, or closest will win……..
As you can imagine many of the drivers identified came up several times at the workshops. I have ordered the drivers according to the frequency with which they were mentioned. I would like you to now place them in the same order – so to identify the most popular drivers and stick them on the sheets.

16. JISC E-books UK Roadshow
The correct answer….
Better Technology
Student Expectations
Publisher Buy-In
Updated Teaching Styles
Standardisation of Standards
Author Buy-In
Budgets
Space
New Business Models
Open Access
These are the top 10 drivers that librarians mentioned the most as the workshops, quite surpirsing.

17. JISC E-books UK Roadshow
User Survey
Initial benchmark against which to measure changes as the JISC national e-books observatory project progresses.
The survey was circulated to the 127 HE institutions participating in the project and gathered information on current user awareness, perceptions and attitudes towards e-books.
Over 20,000 responses were received to the survey making it one of the largest e-book surveys ever undertaken.
That was what the librarians thought….we also asked the users in the survey……

18. User Survey – The Headlines
JISC E-books UK Roadshow
User Survey – The Headlines
60% of respondents use e-books
45.8% find e-books through their library, 42.6% find them free on the internet
38.6% user spend more than 20 minutes reading online
54.7% dip in and out of the e-books, 8% read a whole chapter, 5.8% read the book
75.9% of staff were aware of the e-books licensed as part of the JISC project
Students are borrowing books from friends and through the library more frequently than purchasing them – 40% as opposed to 3%

19. JISC E-books UK Roadshow
Your thoughts?
Keep up to date at
Caren Milloy –
You each have a copy of the survey, take it away, read it and we look forward to getting the log data as well….kee