1. Chemistry Titles - Pilot Project 1 In September 2008, I selected 59 recent chemistry books appropriate for our collection. Total price was $10,180. Records were inserted into our catalog. Absolutely no publicity was done. I wanted to test if and when patrons would discover them in the course of normal searching. Items were purchased automatically upon second use, no librarian intervention. Results 25 titles (42%) were purchased automatically to date at a cost of $3,890. 11 titles were purchased within the 1 st month. 7 more titles were purchased within the next three months. Latest purchase was July 22, 2010. 13 titles (22%) were purchased by me in April 2009 with year-end money costing $2,280. I deemed these titles worthy of addition to our permanent collection. 21 (35%) titles remain in the catalog awaiting discovery & purchase. Acknowledgments Many thanks to Charles Lyons, our Scholarly Communication and Electronic Resources Librarian, and the UB E-Book Task Force for providing assistance & data for this project. Task Force Members: Charlie DAniello, Cynthia Bertuca, Nina Cascio, Kate Cunningham-Hendrix, John Ilardo, Charles Lyons, Sue Neumeister. Liaison Selected Clusters – Pilot Project 2 (Charles Lyons) In 2009, our business librarian created & purchased two topical clusters of eBooks: Careers & Entrepreneurship. Why these topics: High demand, high interest, broad appeal Bang for the buck – general interest titles cheaper, hence able to buy many titles. EBooks give distance students more convenient access, e.g.: UB Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership located downtown Clusters allowed targeted promotion to specific groups of users. Blog entries on business guides. http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/blog/bizbrary/?page_id=45 http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/blog/bizbrary/?page_id=45 In-class presentations Email & e-newsletters Conclusions 1.Patron driven acquisition works. Dont be afraid of it. 2.A variety of models including selector-guided programs are successful. 3.Publicity is not required. E-books can be & are discovered by patrons in your catalog. 4. Biggest benefit of large-scale PDA catalog loads may be in meeting patron needs via short-term loans. A. Ben Wagner, Chemistry & Physics Librarian, University at Buffalo For further information: Please contact abwagner@buffalo.edu ALL IN – 55,000 PDA Titles (UB E-Books Task Force) In January 2011, as a large-scale trial, 55,000 titles from EBook Library (EBL) were loaded into our catalog, essentially all EBL titles meeting the following criteria: Published 2007+ & under $175 A few non-academic publishers excluded How it worked: Almost no publicity. What would patrons discover on their own? (helped by large # of titles & recent dates coming to top of results) Titles not purchased until 3-4 patron-initiated short- term loans (small fraction of purchase price) Short-term loans (STLs) = download or >5 minutes of reading $25,000 committed to pilot project (spent by 3/20/2011). All non-purchased titles were then pulled from our catalog. FINDINGS 1,878 STLs ($17,950 = 74% of funds) 81 autopurchases ($6,400 = 26% of funds) 978 unique users 1 user initiated 154 STLs, next highest=28 Patron Driven E-Book Acquisitions: Crowd sourcing gone wild? A Wordle diagram of most recent 200 article titles about e-books from Library Literature & Information Science database. First 7 Titles Purchased 1)Greene's Protective Groups in Organic Synthesis 2)Catalyst Preparation : Science and Engineering 3) Metal Oxides : Chemistry and Applications 4) Molecular Modelling for Beginners 5)Name Reactions of Functional Group Transformations 6)Thermodynamics and Introductory Statistical Mechanics 7)Mathematics for Physical Chemistry : A Guide to Calculation in Physical and General Chemistry Most used Business Title in 2011: Introduction to Marketing Concepts Most used Sci/Tech Title in 2011: Statistical Detection & Surveillance of Geographic Clusters