Because it is small fast and easy to create and share, it is not the best quality and easy to pirate but in the end it serves the purpose of the user. It works on any device and can even be a ring tone. For better or worse the PDF is the default document format. If you ask any user what digital format they would like to receive a document over 500 words to read 80% will say PDF 19% will say MS Word and 1% will come up with some format that none of us have ever heard of and they don’t count.

As publishers we have to concern our selves with the wants and more so needs of the users. We have to meet those needs or the users will find someone else who can. All a user wants in an academic setting is to search for something – find it and then use it for whatever they are working on. They don’t want to blog about what a cool book they found they found they don’t want to put it on their Facebook page what they do want to finish their work in the most efficient way possible and then move on (they may want to bookmark their info for future reference but don’t need a suite of Gadgets and Apps to do it because there is Zotero and a Bookmark button in every browser).

Indeed, most eBooks have been ‘born digital’ for some time– and in fact, why limit that content to being ported to another eReader format, the hallowed ePub or anything else?

With the advent of print-on-demand technology, this equation is coming full-circle.

Not only will titles be created, distributed, and archived electronically, but the user will be in a position to order up a print copy whenever they like.

This will help create the truly “format free” world many of us have been predicting. In the meantime, the competition among the ebook providers is a benefit to everyone, and there’s no way to test this technology except over a period of time, and in the real-world.

It also implies that no-one uses the extra material acquired. This is not true. Several years ago, when our first Big Deal was up for renewal I looked at our usage stats, to see if we could just keep the most “popular” titles. Two things came out – that there were plenty of titles we hadn’t had print subs for, that were substantially more used than ones we did. And that to get back to the same number of titles we had before the Big Deal we would have to lose access to many titles which had seen more than 100 article downloads for the year. Not a huge number, but a decent one if you think how much that would cost to replace in DocDel. So we kept the Big Deal.

The other comment I would make is that PDF was (and is) a popular format because people don’t read on screen. They print long things out and read them that way. Publishers liked that because the printing cost was carried by the reader, not the publisher. If anyone really thought that users would only read on screen they would have only created html versions of the journal.

And if eBooks are born electronic, not scanned, (which most are these days) who’s to say that they can’t be converted to an e-reader format? In fact, given the amount of PDF out there, who’s to say that some bright 18 year old isn’t working on a PDF to iPhone app right now, so that conversion can be done on the fly?

Second, even at Peanut U, as I dub where I work, where the marketing of e-materials has been rocky at best, eBooks out-circ paper books 2 to 1, and the rate of usage is going up for e and down for paper.

It is absolutely true that reading an entire eBook on a computer screen is a drag, but apparently, they are satisficing user workflows. (Our ebrary collection does the best of all, though I think Credo will do better when faculty are made more aware of that collection.) When we have better solutions for the device issue, then usage will blow sky-high.

I believe in leasing for other reasons. Anyone remember the whole ownership-versus-access argument… for networked CD-ROMs? Gosh, for just a few more dollars, we could own those CDs forever! Um, yeah, right. Anyone use one of those CDs lately? Or even in the last decade? For that matter, most of us are saddled with a legacy format that takes up a whole lot of space and isn’t being used… and devoured many trees in its production. In the end, we are “leasing” information anyway; it all goes away.

For now, I would like to submit that the onus is on the library to promote the services they purchase. I can think of countless examples where libraries have bought similar collections and experienced vastly different usage. The reason? Marketing. Yes, there I said it…the libraries that actively promote their services to patrons will experience a faster and deeper rate of adoption of electronic materials than those that do not.

Part of a disciplined plan to promote a new resource would include research before allocating funds to gauge the demand. I believe it’s always a good idea to determine if my customers want something before attempting to sell it to them. Patrons are no different. In addition to informing the purchase decision, such an approach helps set expectations and limits the risk of wasting money on a pure experiment. The ancillary effect of developing acceptance (buy-in) among library staff is an obvious bonus.

Local promotion is more than just putting records into the catalog. It means expanding the channels by which patrons can discover local resources, and making an effort to remind the students that these things exist. It means engaging services that allow disparate resources to be brought together and cross accessed easily by researchers. The means through which new vitality can be imparted upon academic content have never been so plentiful, and who better to sort this out than libraries and their support structure?

To be fair, I do not believe that the content aggregators or vendors do a sufficient job in providing support to libraries to achieve awareness of newly acquired resources. Sadly, I believe libraries must do more to illustrate their value. Part of that will come through shameless self promotion and generating quantitative data that demonstrates success. Rather than require librarians to become marketing or network professionals, I suggest they find a partner to assist them in this effort…but be prepared to pay for it. Such an undertaking is complex, requires specialized knowledge, and has the potential to yield great results—every service that fits that description comes at a premium.

Almost without exception, the same libraries that demanded title-by-title selection and purchase requested collections of electronic books, and for two good reasons: 1) Retrospective collection development is always necessary when building a new collection – any collection without critical mass is useless. 2) It proved to be inefficient and prohibitive to engage in title-by-title review and selection for most libraries, just as it is with print. So the request came to create collections, and include new title notification and automatic purchase into existing mechanisms used for print. Perfectly sensible.

Many customers still wanted to be reassured that purchasing electronic books would look very much like purchasing a print title. However, in day-to-day collection development, they had no intention of buying a single e-books any more than they would purchase single print titles.

A question I would ask is, why has the measure of collection success suddenly changed for electronic books? Print collections are not used much at all. Many large ARL libraries see fewer than 50% of titles ever circulate. Many titles that are accessed by students only circulate once. Is that a good value?

Re: the comment from Mary O’Dea, “…a library’s e-books *need* to be used, or the money is not well-spent.” Has this ever been the criteria for judging the value of the print collection? In fact, the tradition has been all about satisfying a just-in-case strategy that has done little more than fill shelves with printed material that is not used by patrons. Indeed, a new day of reckoning is upon us, and how collections will be valued will change. Of course, this is a gateway to a much deeper and perhaps more important debate.

For now, I would suggest that if libraries do not meet patron expectations by offering materials in the formats they expect to find, the institution will struggle to justify its existence.

My recommendation: if your collection is now being valued based on what is being used, there is only one real option- you must transition collection development to the patron base. Systems must be adopted that allow for the discovery of titles prior to purchase, and allow for near instant delivery to the patron. There are many options that come close to this ‘patron-driven’ model, but the only way to provide a truly well used collection is to pre-filter what the patron has to choose from, allow for discovery, and then deliver the thing upon request. You will then acheive at least one use per purchase, which is a lot better than any existing print collection.

And one final comment…I don’t know what’s expensive about any of the online ebook solutions. Ebrary costs next to nothing for their platform, and books are priced competitive to print. EBL offers a number of options to deal with costs. In any case, whatever is spent on platform fees are a tiny fraction of what would be spent on maintaining a local system. What does it cost to store and maintain print collections? Studies from the University of Texas suggest electronic books are an order of magnitude less expensive to maintain. There appear to be a number of double standards in play. It’s really time to reconcile and normalize the print vs. e-book perspective.

For myself I don’t want an e-book reader, I just want two devices, one I can put in a pocket and one big enough to read, write and surf on. If this can be merged into one device I’ll have one of those.

My sense is that there isn’t a single answer for all uses of all electronic titles, but that as a first-order approximation, academics treat books differently from journal articles, and that there are huge differences between disciplines.

And there is certainly technology available to publishers to measure the use of their materials. Morgan Claypool is an excellent example.

The savvy library directors understand the need for malleable content that can accommodate varying display environments. The problem you describe really pertains to libraries who purchase e-books on a traditional ownership model. Many librarians are comfortable with buying e-books on a leasing model. We know the shortcomings of e-books. By leasing, we aren’t committed to long term preservation of the e-book content and software/hardware required to read it. We simply cancel a subscription and then subscribe to the next format.

Speaking as a former, and sometimes current, graduate student, I can say anecdotally that it is likely just as important for academic/scholarly works to be portable, as it is for recreational reading matter. I would even take this argument a step further and suggest that it may be even *more* important that truly dense, technical content be downloadable to an e-ink, or other small device, so that it may be ported to a location where the human reader may have some serenity (i.e., the sofa) and control over lighting conditions, because the human reader’s eyes are going to be on it for a longer period. Especially if the book is in a language of which the user is not a native speaker.

Academic publications in e-format do carry with them many advantages. Among them: They cannot easily be vandalized. They cannot be lost, stolen or dropped into a mud puddle. Unfortunately, right now they are likely to be difficult to access (in some instances being available only in specific locations or even on specific workstations; and/or requiring sometimes byzantine authentication procedures); difficult to use (navigation options vary, downloading for offline use is likely impossible, and printing the entire text is a copyright violation); or both. And all of those variables differ from vendor to vendor.

I agree with Mr. D’Agostino. Having e-books in the library collection should not be an end in itself. E-book software developers need to take usability into account, even if it means harmonizing with the competition. If e-books become more usable (=*readable*), vendors might even benefit from increased individual sales. It is not uncommon for a scholar to like a particular library text enough to obtain a personal copy. What’s good for electronic publishers’ library customers will in the end be good for the electronic publishing industry.

Presuming that there is no Digital Preservation component in any of this, a library’s e-books *need* to be used, or the money is not well-spent.

Mary O’Dea
Head of Acquisitions
The Newberry Library

*Just keeping my hand on the pulse of electronic reading.*

The real problem is the lack of appropriate reading devices. Contrary (again) to a vociferously stated view, LCD screens are not ideal reading screens but PDFs currently are best viewed on one. I believe that in the not-too-distant future there will be a convergence of an excellent reading screen with PDF. When that happens, academic libraries will be able to boast how they foresaw the future and grabbed it before anyone else.