Establishing a National Strategy for the Provision and Use of e-Books in UK Academic Libraries Ray Lonsdale Department of Information Studies,

Establishing a National Strategy for the Provision and Use of e-Books in UK Academic Libraries
Ray Lonsdale Department of Information Studies, University of Wales Aberystwyth Chris Armstrong Centre for Information Quality Management, Aberystwyth For those engaged in managing electronic resources in academic libraries, there is a significant array of challenges associated with their selection, acquisition, and promotion. These challenges have been exacerbated with the most recent manifestation of e-publishing, the electronic book. Indeed, it might be argued the format presents new challenges for the collection manager. Equally, academic book publishers and specialist e-book publishers are venturing into uncharted waters, navigating through the issues of authorship, format, supply, and new economic and management models. During the late 1990s, several countries including N America and Australia felt that it was essential to establish bodies responsible for creating national strategies to support and facilitate the publishing of e-books, and to address the collection management and promotion issues associated with the format.

Aim and Structure of Presentation
To describe the development and implementation of a UK national strategy to facilitate the provision and exploitation of e-books within the academic community. Our paper describes the establishment of a national strategy for the UK which is designed to facilitate the production, provision and the exploitation of e-books within universities and colleges of further education, ie colleges concerned with post-16 education.

Aim and Structure of Presentation
To describe the development and implementation of a UK national strategy to facilitate the provision and exploitation of e-books within the academic community. Structure Genesis of a national strategy Achieving critical mass of available e-books Facilitating access and use I am going to begin by tracing the development of the strategy, and consider that element which is concerned with creating a critical mass of e-book publishing for academic institutions. My colleague CJA will then take over and describe how the strategy is facilitating access and use of these resources within the academic community.

Early Research: Provision of e-Monographs & Textbooks in UK
st national study in the UK The story begins 5 years ago when we were commissioned to undertake the 1st national study of e-book production and provision. The study comprised two large-scale surveys, one of UK and international e-book academic publishers, and a second of e-book provision within university libraries. In retrospect, the survey was possibly ahead if its time since…

st national study in the UK Dearth of e-book publishing in UK …it revealled a dearth of publishing within the UK, and considerable uncertainty and apprehension on the part of book publishers about thee market, and not a little reticence.

st national study in the UK Dearth of e-book publishing in UK Digitisation of printed books A comprehensive analysis of the nature of e-books being published suggested that most were digitised versions of printed books, and there was little evidence of the exciting value added features that were manifest in the academic e-books emanating from N America.

st national study in the UK Dearth of e-book publishing in UK Digitisation of printed books CD-ROM format transcended by online publishing, emergence of e-book readers Although the CD-ROM format dominated, there was considerable evidence from both the producers and the academic community to indicate that the format would ultimately be superseded by online publishing, and there were the first signs of interest in the handheld e-book readers within the university sector – pre-empting the considerable developments today.

st national study in the UK Dearth of e-book publishing in UK Digitisation of printed books CD-ROM format transcended by online publishing, emergence of e-book readers Major collection management issues Although the incidence of provision within the university sector was very low, the study identified an array of major concerns and issues associated with the collection management of the format, in particular, selection and evaluation, bibliographical control, access, and licensing matters. In spite of the low incidence of publishing provision, the study registered considerable interest and expectation on the part of all the major stakeholders – publishers, academic librarians, academic staff, computer personnel, and it was evident that there was incredible potential.

st national study in the UK Dearth of e-book publishing in UK Digitisation of printed books CD-ROM format transcended by online publishing, emergence of e-book readers Major collection management issues Need for a national strategy to develop publishing in UK Following the direction of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) in N America, and the Vice Chancellors Committee in Australia, a key conclusion drawn was the need to establish a national strategy, and this became a major recommendation of the report. One question begged was which organisation would be best placed to take on the responsibility of bringing together the major stakeholders and formulate and implement a strategy.

Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)
JISC promotes the innovative application and use of information systems and ICT in Further and Higher Education in the UK And the answer lay in the body responsible for funding the research, the JISC. For those unfamiliar with JISC, this a major organisation, responsible for promoting the application and use of information systems and Information and communication technology within the academic community. I want to say a brief word about its remit.

JISC promotes the innovative application and use of information systems and ICT in Further and Higher Education in the UK Networking infrastructure Catalyst to e-resource production Facilitates provision and use of e-resources within education sectors A fundamental responsibility is to ensure that there is a comprehensive and efficient networking infrastructure to all universities and further ed colleges (NB not within the institutions). It has a major role to play in facilitating access to electronic resources such as online databases and e-journals through the establishment of agreed national licences, which in turn serves to stimulate the production of electronic resources. And another focus of JISC activity is enhancing the effective use of these resources by ILS staff, students and academic staff within the sectors. Our recommendation regarding a strategy for developing e-book production coincided with a wider initiative which was being established within JISC during 2000, namely…..

JISC promotes the innovative application and use of information systems and ICT in Further and Higher Education in the UK Networking infrastructure Catalyst to e-resource production Facilitates provision and use of e-resources within education sectors Collection development strategy … the creation of a CD strategy. The aim of this is to promote the development of a managed infrastructure for making available and accessing high quality electronic resources. 8 e-formats were identified for inclusion within this infrastructure , including e-journals, images/ pictures, maps, moving images and sound, and, following our recommendation … e-books. Each collection area is steered by a Working Group responsible for creating and implementing a national strategy..

JISC e-Books Working Group
National body created in 2001 Comprising Higher & Further Education Library & Academic Staff, Publishers, British Library, Publishers Association, JISC Representative & Collection Development Officer And so it was that in spring 2001 the e-books WG came into being. We are a large body comprising 15 representatives from the education sectors, academic publishers, relevant bodies such as our PA and the BL. And critically, a full-time Collection Development Officer – a central figure.

JISC e-Books Working Group
Remit Facilitate the establishment of a critical mass of e-books easily accessible to the education sectors Improve access to, and use of, the format within institutions If you look at the published paper you will see that the WG has an extensive remit which can be summarised thus: First, we’re working to facilitate the establishment of a critical mass of pertinent e-books, and to ensure that e-book output is made accessible easily and economically to the education sectors. Second, we’re scrutinising the issues surrounding the provision to libraries and academic staff with a view to ensuring access and exploitation I want to turn to the first remit, and explain the strategy behind it.

Facilitating a Critical Mass
Analysis of the e-book publishing sector One of the first priorities for the Group was to undertake analysis of the UK and International market, and identify critical factors on both the supply and demand sides. These include: an industry overview and forecasts, an economic overview, marketing and exploitation, distribution and the role of intermediaries a summary of technical issues A detailed statement of these appears on the Group’s website, given as the final reference in our paper.

Analysis of the e-book publishing sector Acquisitions Programme National agreements in place Early English Books Online Oxford Reference Online Xreferplus Wiley Interscience e-reference work An acquisitions programme has been established under which the CD Officer has secured an number of major national agreements with the publishers for e-books. These include: Early English Books Online, a collection of 125,000 titles of the late 15c to18c As part of a reference portfolio, two collections central to the academic sectors are now available: Oxford Reference Online – 100+ OUP dictionaries and other ref works & Xreferplus which is a collection of 120 quality titles by the world’s leading publishers. Finally, a major resource for science, technology and engineering from Wiley, Interscience.

Analysis of the e-book publishing sector Acquisitions Programme National agreements in place Early English Books Online Oxford Reference Online Xreferplus Wiley Interscience e-reference work Future developments 15 publishers and aggregators At present we’re working with 15 other publishers and aggregators, including netLibrary, to secure more agreements. To ensure that future e-book titles are pertinent to the needs of the different academic communities, a major 2 part project was established last year.

Mapping the Market Study Entitled Mapping the Market, the research, which was conducted by ourselves and the CD Officer, Louise Edwards, has just completed the first annual cycle, and is designed to…

Mapping the Market Study Objectives: Identify requirements for individual disciplines and education sectors Ascertain feelings about licensing and pricing ..Elicit precise data from the market about the types of e-books required for individual disciplines in universities, and also within the FE sector. Furthermore, to ensure that appropriate licences are developed, the study was formulated to collect opinion from university and college librarians and academics about preferred licensing and costing models.

Mapping the Market Study Objectives: Identify requirements for individual disciplines and education sectors Ascertain feelings about licensing and pricing Look at perceptions of ILS staff about e-books Explore attitudes towards e-books within institutions Examine collection management issues associated with the format The study also had three other objectives which are related to the issues concerned with provision and exploitation of e-books within academic institutions, which CJ is going to discuss later.

Facilitating a Critical Mass: Mapping the Market Study
Methodology Qualitative study Data collection methods 10 Focus groups (69 institutions) Business & Management; Engineering; Medicine and Health; plus Further Education With added value seminars Essentially a qualitative study, we conducted focus group meetings with representatives of three disciplines and the FE sector. Critically, the focus groups were preceded by a morning of presentations and added value seminars given by e-book publishers demonstrating existing and potential titles within the appropriate subject field.

Preferred types of e-book for specific disciplines and FE Textbooks, reference works, monographs & grey literature Considerable data were amassed on the types of ebooks which disciplines prioritised, and on the appropriate levels required eg undergraduate, postgraduate, research. [Just to give you an EG, Undergrad textbooks for all disciplines; engineering – also prioritised research monographs and certain forms of grey literature, esp conference proceeding of specified bodies].

Preferred types of e-book for specific disciplines and FE Textbooks, reference works, monographs & grey literature Preferred formats PDF v HTML v Other: Handhelds We were able to ascertain preferred formats for e-book,s and collected data about which disciplines were concerned to access texts using handheld readers.

Preferred types of e-book for specific disciplines and FE Textbooks, reference works, monographs & grey literature Preferred formats PDF v HTML v Other: Handhelds Opinions on licensing and pricing models Proliferation of licensing & costing models Need for model licence As I mentioned earlier, a central objective was to gather opinion about licensing, there is great consternation over the proliferation of models at present, strong demand for a model licence to be developed by the JISC Group, and specific issues associated with the nature of such a licence were identified.

Dissemination of findings to publishers In keeping with the aim of tailoring future publishing of e-books to the specific needs of the academic communities, the findings of the report will be disseminated to UK publishers. Indeed, we have already held one seminar, and there was, not unexpectedly, considerable interest in the market needs and opinions.

Dissemination of findings to publishers Informing the creation of a model licence The licensing data has already been used to inform the creation of a model licence. A draft is currently being scrutinised by the Group and the JISC

Dissemination of findings to publishers Informing the creation of a model licence Mapping Study 2 Extending subject coverage Drilling down to required publishers / titles I mentioned that this was the first of a 2 part study, and we will be repeating the exercise next year targeting another range of disciplines including the humanities, law, computing and media studies. Furthermore, we intend to drill down in those fields, and also the subject areas covered in the first cycle, to ascertain prioritised titles and publishers.

Dissemination of findings to publishers Informing the creation of a model licence Mapping Study 2 Extending subject coverage Drilling down to required publishers / titles Other research The Working Group has recently commissioned 2 studies into Free E-Books and Textbooks which will elicit more specific data that will also be used to inform the acquisition programme. Since their remit is wide ranging, CJ will say more about these studies later.

JISC E-Books Working Group: Remit
Facilitate the establishment of a critical mass of e-books easily accessible to the education sectors What I have offered is a cursory explanation of the strategy which the Working Group has established to help develop a pertinent and accessible critical mass of e-books for the academic sectors – the first remit of the group. I’m going to hand over to CJ who will explore the strategy concerned with the groups’ second remit.

JISC E-Books Working Group: Remit
Facilitate the establishment of a critical mass of e-books easily accessible to the education sectors Improve access to, and use of, the medium within institutions My first slide! I am going to be talking about the Working Group’s 2nd remit And the strategy put in place - A strategy informed by whole series of studies – to improve access to and use of e-books. We have said “and use of” because as the first study has shown, there is a need to pro-actively ensure that the community knows about any given resource ( Leading onto JISC research and Group research )

Improve Access to, and Use of, e-Books: Studies
JUSTEIS Demonstrates low awareness and use of electronic resources in Further and Higher Education JISC working groups are informed by other JISC research - You will hear about JUSTEIS and the JISC Monitoring and Evaluation Framework on Thursday – from our colleague CJU who directs that project with us. It is an ongoing Longitudinal project looking at the awareness and use of electronic resources in academic institutions … and one example of the many research projects that JISC funds. It is one which informed them as they set up the working groups (e-books, e-journals and the others) and set out their remits. It continues to inform the e-book working group – predominantly because it continues to show a general low awareness of the range of electronic resources … including e-books.

Bibliographical Access Study Continuing research since initial (1998) study Funded by other bodies but Influenced both the remit and the activities of the Working Group Not actually commissioned by the Group but work which influenced it, is our own work on Bibliographical Access – the “Provision of e-monographs and textbooks in the UK” project that Ray spoke of earlier.

Bibliographical Access Study Continuing research since initial (1998) study Funded by other bodies but Influenced both the remit and the activities of the Working Group Bibliographical deficiencies The paper delineates some of the most recent findings … but importantly It has shown up – and continues to show up –the shortcomings in the bibliographical apparatus available to libraries interested in electronic books [ e.g. next slide ]

Bibliographical Access Study Difficulties experienced by libraries: No single source of bibliographic information No one source for all subjects e-Books not on the bibliographic databases that are used for ordering books No equivalent to Global Books in Print Not yet listed as alternatives to print books These encapsulate some of the comments made on a recent questionnaire survey [READ 1 and 5]. … Also highlighted were the: Diversity of approaches used to locate e-books Strong reliance on serendipity (chance) Lack of awareness of established bibliographic tools … there are some routes available to discover e-books

Bibliographical Access Study Continuing research since initial (1998) study Funded by other bodies but Influenced both the remit and the activities of the Working Group Bibliographical deficiencies Map of Bibliographical Sources As a part of the study we created a taxonomy or chart of the existing bibliographical apparatus. (Publisher sites, book trade bibliographies (BookData), Internet e-book suppliers, aggregators, mailing lists, journals, and so on). It would be nice to say that we had some direct responsibility for the recent UK legislation on legal deposit; in fact we had only some indirect influence through colleagues! But a Bill extending legal deposit to all non-print publications (including web sites) had its 2nd reading in March The Group recognised the significance of the deficiencies in bibliographic access … And commissioned more work So - Moving on to projects actually funded by the working group…

Bibliographical Access Study Continuing research since initial (1998) study Funded by other bodies but Influenced both the remit and the activities of the Working Group Bibliographical deficiencies Map of Bibliographical Sources UK Legal Deposit legislation As a part of the study we created a taxonomy or chart of the existing bibliographical apparatus. (Publisher sites, book trade bibliographies (BookData), Internet e-book suppliers, aggregators, mailing lists, journals, and so on). It would be nice to say that we had some direct responsibility for the recent UK legislation on legal deposit; in fact we had only some indirect influence through colleagues! But a Bill extending legal deposit to all non-print publications (including e-journals, e-books and web sites) had its 2nd reading in March The Group recognised the significance of the deficiencies in bibliographic access … And commissioned more work So - Moving on to projects actually funded by the working group…

e-Book Working Group also commissioned research 4 national projects commissioned since 2002 … sought further background information and commissioned its own research in the shape of 4 projects Which I’ll talk about briefly now

Mapping the Market Study Perceptions of ILS staff and users about e-books Advantages, disadvantages, status Several of objectives of the Mapping Study are concerned directly with 2nd Group objective: improving access and use (First objective – critical mass, Ray talked about earlier) This is the work we undertook for the Working Group (Ray has mentioned its objectives and the methodology). We were able to explore in the focus groups both the challenges of print collections and ways in which it was felt that an electronic collection could improve things (space, access, theft of or damage to stock, currency); We also looked at the status of e-books: degree of acceptance; and preferred types (HE: all subject fields / Undergraduate – predominant; Taught Postgraduate (Business and Engineering); FE: all subject fields and levels. Also Short loans (all) and core texts (Business and FE) / Annual new editions (Health and FE)

Mapping the Market Study Perceptions of ILS staff and users about e-books Advantages, disadvantages, status Collection management issues Bibliographic issues Selection and acquisition Modes of Access Promotion Evaluation Apart from continued examination of bibliographic issues – which I’ve already talked about – The focus groups talked to librarians about acquisition of e-books and how they can be accessed; about their promotion to the academic community; and about evaluation of their use. There have been some useful findings already … but the project is moving into a second phase this year. Other projects…

Promoting the Uptake of Electronic Books in Higher and Further Education Gold Leaf Consultancy Remit: To look at issues surrounding the uptake of e-books, including promotion by publishers, access, bibliographic control Reporting in September 2003 I’ve mention that research has shown that students and academics do not make effective use of the e-resources available to them – this project, undertaken for the Group by Gold Leaf – is looking at these issues for e-books. Particularly at publishers’ promotion and the means employed by libraries to demonstrate their benefits.

Strategy for Electronic Textbooks in UK Further and Higher Education Educations for Change, Centre for Publishing Studies, & University of Stirling Remit: Analyse the textbook market – with particular regard to business models, identify barriers to uptake and ways to overcome barriers Reporting September 2003 Focussing just on Textbooks, this study will again look at barriers to their take up (and, of course, ways that these can be overcome). The study is concentrating on business models used by content providers and industry but will also look at the impact of VLE/MLEs and competence in using information and learning technologies (ILT) There is a very strong team working on this project with three organisations that have considerable experience of the field.

Investigation into Free e-Books Oxford Text Archive, Arts and Humanities Data Service Remit: Examine the availability of, and user needs for, free e-books, and explore the extent to which existing free e-books can be re-purposed for Further and Higher Education Reporting September 2003 Finally, there are a huge amount of free ebooks available Dumbarton Oaks, Virginia Text Archive; Gutenberg; even within netLibrary. These are largely out of copyright The project will look at how they can be made available and their suitability: Are there Quality issues? Access issues? And so on

Major national seminar to inform the communities Publishers; and academics and librarians in FE and HE Autumn 2003 The result of all this research activity is not just to inform the JISC and the e-Book Working Group, but to inform the communities. As experience in Australia and the USA has demonstrated, e-books will only become effective and viable if the bodies responsible for their: generation (authors), production (publishers), distribution (e.g. for education, the JISC), dissemination (libraries) and use (readers: academic staff and students) are brought together, and made aware of each other’s concerns and needs. Already the e-book Working Group has achieved much in this area. Our own Mapping Study has informed publishers and librarians, each of the others needs and concerns. An important Seminar organised by the Working Group will take place in the Autumn at which the issues surrounding access of use will be discussed with representatives of the major stakeholders – publishers, etc

Conclusion Achievements: the Group has:
informed and publicised e-books Just barely 2 years on… (since the Group was established) The strategy put in place has enabled the group to achieve a number of goals already Informed the communities and publicised e-books

informed and publicised e-books established a forum for communication between all parties Brought together publishers, librarians and academics

informed and publicised e-books established a forum for communication between all parties helped facilitate a critical mass of e-books Played a significant role in making e-titles available

informed and publicised e-books established a forum for communication between all parties helped facilitate a critical mass of e-books developed a licensing model Developed a model licence

informed and publicised e-books established a forum for communication between all parties helped facilitate a critical mass of e-books developed a licensing model Identified and addressed issues of concern in management of e-book collections Looked at collection management issues and

informed and publicised e-books established a forum for communication between all parties helped facilitate a critical mass of e-books developed a licensing model Identified and addressed issues of concern in management of e-book collections started to forge international links Started to forge international links… Talking of which Both we and the Group would be interested to hear from you

And Finally… Have other countries established similar strategies to enhance publishing of e-books? Can national strategies influence collection management policy issues? Do they impact positively on provision and use of e-books? On the experience and activities in other countries Incidentally This work is in context of academic libraries – but work we are doing now suggests that some of these questions may be relevant to public library (and other) sectors. In UK there is now a small amount of work being done to investigate issues surrounding public library provision. Richmond

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