jisc collections 24-apr-14 | soas e-books workshop | slide 1
TRANSCRIPT
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 1
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 2
Textbooks wanted
Libraries are demanding e-text books
Publishers do not want to sell them
Why?
E-books free at the point of use might mean no print sales to students
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 3
What the librarians told us
Too expensive:
E-book pricing models are not satisfactory (64%)
Not the right type of e-books:
There is too little choice of e-book titles (62%)
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 4
What we are doing
1. license collections of e-books that are highly relevant
2. four discipline areas:
– Business and Management studies
– Engineering
– Medicine (not mental health or nursing)
– Media Studies
3. evaluate the use of the e-books through deep log analysis
4. understand user behaviour
5. understand the impact of free at the point of use
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 5
e-books we licensed
Media studies: 7 e-books
Medical: 10 e-books
Business and Management studies: 5 e-books
Engineering: 14 e-books
36 e-books in total!
Is that all?
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 6
National observatory
Project Participation
127
80
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
1 2E-book Collection
Nu
mber
of
Su
bscri
bers
MyiLibrary
Ovid76%
47%
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 7
National engagement
12 workshops 250 librarians
from 131 institutions
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 8
Librarians’ 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
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 9
What the study is doing
Asking users what they think they do
Analysis of raw server log data– finding out what users actually do
Final report – what they actually do and what libraries and publishers need to do
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 10
User Survey
Nationwide coverage
An initial benchmark of the academic population: what they think they do
>22,437 responses (1 March)
123 universities
89.1% completion rate
Representative sample
Largest e-book survey ever?
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 11
Findings 1
Survey confirms bottlenecks in the system
– 21.8% of students `dissatisfied’ or `very dissatisfied’ with library provision of printed course textbooks
– around half of teachers report regular complaints about library provision
– 65.5% in media studies!
High levels of interest in e-books
– 60% of the academic population is already using e-books
– especially popular with men and postgraduate students
Low student content purchasing intentions
JISC Project texts (only):
– student purchasing intentions appear low (3.1%)
– there is much reliance here on library copies (35.8%)
– multiple readership (sharing with a friend) (40%)This is not a generalisable finding to all e-books.
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 12
What they say they do
Screen reading or print
In spite of a general presumption more than half of all users say they read e-books from a screen, even in the case of those aged 56-65. Is this is a red herring?
– Reading from the screen 62.6% say they read the contents of the e-book from the screen
– Only 6.4% say they print it out
– 54.3% students say they ‘dip in and out’
This has big implications for publishers!
Role of the physical or virtual library
Physical library: 45.2% students go every week
Virtual library: 43.8% student go every week
Access from outside the campus
Students and staff, but especially women students, value the convenience of being able to access library services from home: 41.6% access the virtual library from home(44.3% female, 36.8% males)
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 13
How they say they find the books
Discovering e-book content
Catalogue entries and links from the library web site are very powerful determinants of e-book take-up, as confirmed again here.31% of students use the library website23% of students use the library catalogue19.3% of students find out about the books from their tutor
This is why we need good MARC Records and persistent URLs and ISBNs for e-books! – It needs another presentation to tell you about all the issues we’ve discovered about the implementation of standards (or the lack of)!
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 14
Findings so far
Deep Log Analysis of MyiLibrary
Some initial findings
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 15
Type of page viewed: all books
72.4%
5.1%
11.4%
8.2%
2.9%
Content
Searches
Menus
Home page
Other
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 16
The changing landscape: students
“Power browsing” (skimming materials)
“Horizontal” research (shallow)
“Bouncing” (spending only a few minutes looking at materials)
Behaviour not limited to the so-called Google Generation
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 17
What’s next?
If we behave differently in the virtual world does this impact on our buying behaviour in the physical world?
Do publishers need to make different types of books for the virtual world?
Is it time for a new formula for an electronic book?
Are our behaviours driven by physical capacity – in the physical world books take up space and it is difficult to have lots of books at once –they are heavy and take up space – we are tortoisesIn the virtual world we can be caterpillars – munching through lots of stuff!
Are we taking lots of redundant structures into the virtual world because that is what we learned in the physical world?
Should we have e-books at all – or just databases of stuff?
JISC Collections 10 Apr 2023 | SOAS E-books Workshop | Slide 18
Thank You!
Questions?
All reports and information available at:
www.jiscebooksproject.org