Academic E-Books: Publishers, Librarians, and Users

by Suzanne M. Ward (Editor), Robert S. Freeman (Editor), Judith M. Nixon (Editor)

Overview

Academic E-Books: Publishers, Librarians, and Users provides readers with a view of the changing and emerging roles of electronic books in higher education. The three main sections contain contributions by experts in the publisher/vendor arena, as well as by librarians who report on both the challenges of offering and managing e-books and on the issues surrounding patron use of e-books. The case study section offers perspectives from seven different sizes and types of libraries whose librarians describe innovative and thought-provoking projects involving e-books.

Read about perspectives on e-books from organizations as diverse as a commercial publisher and an association press. Learn about the viewpoint of a jobber. Find out about the e-book challenges facing librarians, such as the quest to control costs in the patron-driven acquisitions (PDA) model, how to solve the dilemma of resource sharing with e-books, and how to manage PDA in the consortial environment. See what patron use of e-books reveals about reading habits and disciplinary differences.

Finally, in the case study section, discover how to promote scholarly e-books, how to manage an e-reader checkout program, and how one library replaced most of its print collection with e-books. These and other examples illustrate how innovative librarians use e-books to enhance users’ experiences with scholarly works.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781557537270
Publisher:	Purdue University Press
Publication date:	12/15/2015
Series:	Charleston Insights in Library, Archival, and Information Sciences
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Suzanne M. Ward holds degrees from UCLA, the University of Michigan, and Memphis State University. She has worked at the Purdue University Libraries since 1987 and currently serves as head of Collection Management. Professional interests include patron-driven acquisitions and print retention issues.

Robert S. Freeman has worked at Purdue University since 1997, where he is a reference librarian and liaison to the School of Languages and Cultures and the Department of English. He has an MA in German from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MS in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Judith M. Nixon received her BS degree in education from Valparaiso University and her MS in library science from the University of Iowa. She has held appointments as head of three libraries at Purdue. Currently, she is the bibliographer and liaison to the College of Education.

Table of Contents

Foreword, by Roger Schonfeld
Introduction to Academic E-Books, by Suzanne M. Ward, Robert S. Freeman, and Judith M. Nixon
Publishers’ and Vendors’ Products and Services
1 An Industry Perspective: Publishing in the Digital Age, by Nadine Vassallo
2 The Journey Beyond Print: Perspectives of a Commercial Publisher in the Academic Market, by Rhonda Herman
3 Production, Marketing, and Legal Challenges: The University Press Perspective on E-Books in Libraries, by Tony Sanfilippo
4 Delivering American Society for Microbiology E-Books to Libraries, by Christine B. Charlip
5 Platform Diving: A Day in the Life of an Academic E-Book Aggregator, by Bob Nardini
Librarians’ Challenges
6 University of California, Merced: Primarily an Electronic Library, by Jim Dooley
7 Patron-Driven Acquisitions: Assessing and Sustaining a Long-Term PDA E-Book Program, by Karen S. Fischer
8 Use and Cost Analysis of E-Books: Patron-Driven Acquisitions Plan vs. Librarian-Selected Titles, by Suzanne M. Ward and Rebecca A. Richardson
9 E-Books Across the Consortium: Reflections and Lessons From a Three-Year DDA Experiment at the Orbis Cascade Alliance, by Kathleen Carlisle Fountain
10 The Simplest Explanation: Occam’s Reader and the Future of Interlibrary Loan and E-Books, by Ryan Litsey, Kenny Ketner, Joni Blake, and Anne McKee
11 Developing a Global E-Book Collection: An Exploratory Study, by Dracine Hodges
Users’ Experiences
12 A Social Scientist Uses E-Books for Research and in the Classroom, by Ann Marie Clark
13 The User Experience of E-Books in Academic Libraries: Perception, Discovery, and Use, by Tao Zhang and Xi Niu
14 E-Book Reading Practices in Different Subject Areas: An Exploratory Log Analysis, by Robert S. Freeman and E. Stewart Saunders
15 Library E-Book Platforms Are Broken: Let’s Fix Them, by Joelle Thomas and Galadriel Chilton
Case Studies
16 A Balancing Act: Promoting Canadian Scholarly E-Books While Controlling User Access, by Ravit H. David
17 Of Euripides and E-Books: The Digital Future and Our Hybrid Present, by Lidia Uziel, Laureen Esser, and Matthew Connor Sullivan
18 Transitioning to E-Books at a Medium-Sized Academic Library: Challenges and Opportunities—A Feasibility Study of a Psychology Collection, by Aiping Chen-Gaffey
19 E-Books and a Distance Education Program: A Library’s Failure Rate in Supplying Course Readings for One Program, by Judith M. Nixon
20 Mobile Access to Academic E-Book Content: A Ryerson Investigation, by Naomi Eichenlaub and Josephine Choi
21 E-Reader Checkout Program, by Vincci Kwong and Susan Thomas
22 Out With the Print and in With the E-Book: A Case Study in Mass Replacement of a Print Collection, by Stephen Maher and Neil Romanosky
Epilogue, by Michael Levine-Clark
Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

★ 04/15/2016
Given that perspectives from the publisher and vendor are not common in library literature, the initial chapters in this collection by Ward (head, collection management), Robert Freeman (reference librarian), and Judith Nixon (bibliographer, all Purdue Univ.) are refreshing. How both parties must deal with complications of ebook publishing and the myriad complications around converting older works to electronic format are a revelation to librarians on the other side of the publishing divide. The prediction in the initial chapter that the exponential growth of ebook publishing has leveled off and the statistics showing that print still produces the majority of publishing revenue may come as a surprise. Yet, the remainder of the work focuses on librarian and reader experiences, with chapters containing original case studies and personal encounters. Topics explored include the success of patron-driven access (PDA) plans in libraries, the complexities of library ebook platforms, the costs and difficulties of replacing print books with digital ones in an academic setting, and the issues of interlibrary loan and the electronic format. VERDICT This important overview of the state of academic publishing and library ebook initiatives is essential reading for all librarians, publishers, and authors.—Margaret Sylvia, St. Mary's Univ. Lib., San Antonio

Library Journal