JISC national e-books observatory project

1. JISC national e-books observatory project Digital Library Executive Briefing Hazel Woodward University Librarian, Cranfield University Chair of the NEBO Project Board Caren Milloy JISC Collections E-books Project Manager Presentation to the ICOLC Conference 20th October 2008

2. Project Aims • license collections of e-books that are highly relevant to UK higher education taught course students in four discipline areas: • Business and Management studies • Engineering • Medicine (not mental health or nursing) • Media Studies • evaluate the use of the e-books through deep log analysis and to asses the impact of the ‘free at the point of use’ e-books upon publishers, aggregators and libraries • achieve a high level of participation in the project by making the e-books available on the bidders own platform (where appropriate) and on a variety of e-book aggregator platforms. Higher education institutions will thus have the option to access the e-books on platforms they already use and which are familiar to their users. • transfer knowledge acquired in the project to publishers, aggregators and libraries to help stimulate an e-booksmarket that has appropriate business and licensing models

3. Project participation MyiLibrary 76% Ovid 47%

4. Deep Log Analysis Study January 2008 – June 2009 Finding about how users use e-books to inform business models and licensing models

5. “DLA provides a detailed assessment of the information seeking behaviour of users and these data can be used to help determine impacts and outcomes through qualitative means. DLA involves the processing of huge volumes of usage and search data as provided in the raw transactional logs of publishers/aggregators and then relating this to user demographics to provide a whole range of evidence-based user portraits – hence the word “deep”. In turn this information provides the foundation for follow-up user surveys and interviews, in that the logs raise the questions that need to be asked and the self-report and qualitative data provides the answers to these questions.” Rowlands. I., Nichols. D., Jamali. H. and Huntington. P., 2007. What do faculty and students really think about e-books? Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives. [online] 56 (6), 489-511 Available from www.emeraldinsight.com/0001-253X.htm What is DLA?

6. Benchmarking data collection user survey & institutional survey Analysis of raw server log data 8 Case Studies focus groups with academics, students, librarians Analysis of impact on traditional print sales Analysis of promotional methods, business and licensing methods Benchmarking exit survey Final report and recommendations Deep Log Analysis

7. What they say they do • Dissatisfaction with current library provision • 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.

8. What they say they do • Screen reading or print – 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’ • 38% students spend more than 20 mins reading online, 36% spend 11-20 mins reading online • 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)

9. How they say they find the books • Discovering e-book content The survey shows the importance of catalogue records and the library website in discovery and use of course text e-books • 31% of students use the library website • 23% of students use the library catalogue • 19.3% 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)!

10. Top 10 e-book advantages

11. Raw server log analysis • 26 of 36 course text e-books are on MyiLibrary • Business and Management • Engineering • Media Studies • Over 100,000 e-books available on MyiLibrary platform • 13,000 of the 100,000 e-books were used by institutions participating in the project who have subscriptions direct with MyiLibrary

12. How long their sessions are (19mins) Usage by day and hour (Thursday is study day) Where the users are spending their time How they find navigate to the e-book…………………. Raw server log analysis

13. Appearance of JISC e-books in the MyiLibrary top 10

14. 8 case study institutions: University of Cambridge University of East Anglia University of Liverpool University College London University of Birmingham University of East London Glamorgan University Glasgow Caledonian University Librarian, teaching staff and student focus groups Use data, creation and design, impact on teaching & learning, promotion, pricing & licensing, circulation data Compare benchmarking data, deep log data and find out why users behave in a the ways that we have seen Case Studies

15. JISC E-books UK Roadshow 12 workshops 250 librarians from 131 institutions

16. Interoperability & better technology Student Expectations Publisher Buy-In Updated Teaching Styles Standards policy and adoption Author Buy-In Budgets Space New Business Models Open Access Drivers

17. Business model trials A Study on the Management and Economic Impact of E-textbook Business Models on Publishers, E-book Aggregators and Higher Education Institutions • Impact on publisher print sales / revenue and library budgets • Levels of administrative burden and ease of implementation • Sustainability both in terms of profitability and value for money

18. The future e-book • Is it time for a new format and structure for the e-book. • Are our behaviours driven by physical capacity? For example, does the number of books we can carry, or browse through or indeed use at any one time influence the way we search and read in the physical library? If so, are we unnecessarily transferring those limitations into virtual world? • Do students really want interactivity from e-books or just a PDF? • Should we even have e-books at all or just databases of content? • How do e-books fit more broadly into the student learning experience along with other resources such as Virtual Learning Environment content? • Can segmentation help us to profile users according to geography and type of institutions and academic level and so enable libraries and publishers to better meet their needs?

19. What do we hope to achieve? • The UK education community will have access to quality e-book content that is of high relevance to teaching, learning and research across the broadest range of subject areas. • Flexible business and licensing models will support a diversity of needs, allowing users to do what they want when they want and how they want for education purposes. • All e-books will be easily discoverable and consistent standards will allow all content to be fully integrated into library, learning and research environments. • E-Books Working Group Vision 2007

20. Questions? www.jiscebooksproject.org hazel.woodward@cranfield.ac.uk c.milloy@jisc.ac.uk