Electronic books: a call for effective business models
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assert that, in an effort to more effectively match users' needs to purchases and extend the buying power of library budgets for e‐books, libraries should use a profiled purchase on demand option to supplement their current practices.Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews usage patterns for print and e‐books, business models for e‐books and comments on the benefits of using a patron‐driven acquisitions model.Findings – Circulation of the print collection is slowly declining, with only 20 per cent of the collection circulating in 2009. Large purchased collections of e‐books statistics are roughly the same but those purchased through Patron‐Driven Acquisitions are assured use.Originality/value – The discussion of current business models for e‐books illustrates some challenges libraries face in transitioning from print to electronic. Patron‐driven models allow libraries to help users at point of need and manage scarce resources.
Adopting patron-driven acquisition (PDA) in e-book selection practices at Malaysian academic libraries
The selection practice in academic library is changing with the emergence of electronic resources such as e-book and e-journal. There is a paradigm shift in the acquisition department at the library. The department act as a catalyst in selecting and providing information resources for university in achieving its mission and vision. The introduction of Patron-driven acquisition (PDA) enables faculty, staff and students to select the books they feel are most needed for their research. This paper presents a conceptual framework of e-book selection practices and library's return on investment (ROI) based on the literature reviews. The main focus is on resource sharing, accessibility, sustainability, support distance education and collection features. The soft dollar saving, the intangible benefits and Just-In-Time are also included in the discussion. The paper will lead to adopting of patron-driven acquisition in e-book selection practice. The framework developed from various empirical studies and literature reviews will be a great contribution to any research done in this area in the near future.
Testing Common Assumptions about Resource Sharing.
Introduction For the past eighteen years I have been involved with one of the more established and successful resource-sharing projects. Member institutions of the Illinois Library Computer Systems Organization (ILCSO), through the use of the ILLINET Online (IO) system, have generated millions of resource-sharing transactions since the system first became operational in 1980. In my experience with ILCSO, I have had the opportunity to discuss resource sharing with interested colleagues across the United States and beyond. In these conversations, one often hears some fairly common assumptions about resource sharing, sort of the "common wisdom" of the library community, if you will. Some of these assumptions have seemed questionable to me, based on my experiences with ILCSO resource sharing. Since enrolling in the doctoral program at the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science, I have been interested in testing the validity of some of these general assumptions concerning resource sharing. In this independent study, I will address some of these assumptions through the following research questions: * Do smaller libraries "raid" the collections of larger libraries? * Are smaller libraries deluged by the volume of requests from larger libraries? * Do libraries tend to borrow from similar libraries (e.g., do private colleges borrow mostly from other private colleges, community colleges from other community colleges, etc.)? * Does geographic proximity play a role in resource sharing (i.e., do libraries tend to borrow from the libraries closest to them)? * Are larger libraries net lenders, and smaller libraries net borrowers? * Are there imbalances (e.g., do some libraries have appreciably higher lending/borrowing ratios than others)? If so, why? * How does the volume of resource-sharing activity compare to other factors such as: ILCSO membership fees library materials expenditures library holdings holdings added in a year student population (i.e., FTE count) * Do non-ILCSO libraries borrow from ILCSO libraries in the same ways (i.e., with the same borrowing patterns) that ILCSO libraries borrow from each other? To answer these and other questions, I have obtained a copy of ILCSO resource-sharing data for FY 1997 (July 1, 1996 through June 30, 1997). This is the most recent full year of data available. A brief recap of that year shows that 572,845 resource transactions were initiated against the holdings of the forty-five ILCSO libraries. Of this total, 455,279 transactions were initiated by the ILCSO libraries against the holdings of other ILCSO libraries, 104,956 transactions were initiated by Illinois libraries that were not ILCSO libraries, and 12,610 transactions were initiated by the interlibrary loan offices of the state's fourteen regional library systems, on behalf of member libraries that did not have the technical capability to initiate such transactions on their own. I have also obtained fall 1997 student FTE enrollment counts from the Illinois Board of Higher Education, and have taken statistics related to library expenditures and holdings from the Illinois State Library's compilation of data from the 1996 National Center for Education Statistics' Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Academic Library Survey. Finally, I obtained a copy of the FY 1997 ILCSO library membership assessments from my own files (I develop the final versions of these ILCSO reports). Before I proceed, I should also briefly address the question, "Why study ILCSO resource sharing?" Besides my longstanding familiarity with the project, I also believe that ILCSO resource-sharing data are arguably the best to study. Having been in existence for eighteen years, ILCSO resource-sharing activity is mature and has been thoroughly integrated into a library's routines and activities. …