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Buying by the Bucketful
Founded 1881
Research intensive (Russell Group)
Most disciplines:
Fairly representative (?)
Since Oct 2006 we have purchased (or subscribed to) 19 eBook bundles
Mainly end of financial year purchases
A good way to spend end-of year funds for the benefit of the maximum number of staff and students
Better than e-journal backfiles?
Now budgets are tight...
Liverpool's experiences
with Springer...
Purchased all-subjects collections:
©2005-2008 in July 2008
©2009 in June 2009
©2010 in January 2010
©2011 in January 2011
Our STM depts choose to spend 95% of their library budget on journals.
But when eBooks are made available they account for 40% of usage on SpringerLink.
eBook purchases are a medium to long-term investment for the future, with no 'back history' of usage data.
We make journal renewal decisions based on the past year's use, mainly of previously-purchased articles published in previous years.
After 1 year of ownership about 45% of titles have been used
After 2 years of ownership about 65% of titles have been used
Experiences from Japan
Waseda University
University of Tokyo
Told you we were typical!
Are we seeing subjects starting to plateau out at 3 different levels?
Scope for prioritising which subjects to buy in the future?
Or will they all plateau out at about the same level and just take very different lengths of time to get there?
So if we only need 20% of the titles to get 80% of the downloads, the other 80% of the titles aren't needed and we just need to find a way to choose the right 20%...
Right?
WRONG!
Single eBook titles on
aggregator platforms
Chosen by academics, or
heavily-borrowed in print
3 titles (out of 465)
account for 21%
of full-text access
1 title (out of 190) accounts for 35% of full-text accesses
A third of titles have had 2 full-text accesses or fewer - in 33 months of ownership!
Is that any better than buying a package?
A slightly higher proportion of low use titles than a hand-picked collection.
But not bought at full price!
But with Patron Driven Acquisition all titles are used.
So that must be the best solution...
Right?
"models don't matter, only prices do"
really?
ebrary PDA model
Purchase triggered by:
model this using COUNTER stats from packages
make assumptions:
I'm cheating!
Our 2008 purchase included 2005-2007 at very little cost
But that's one of the benefits of buying packages
So let's take out 2005-2007 and adjust the 2008 payment down a little
3 package purchases in this period adds complexity
3 tranches of content exposed to the PDA model
Let's look at a single year's collection for clarity...
Duh... you did the modelling wrong then!
Iowa ebrary PDA pilot
other PDA models have a higher purchase threshold, but:
rental costs for not-yet-purchased titles
purchase titles at > list price because of prior rental
For price of package, could only buy titles with 7 or more chapter downloads at list price
What PDA model is going to better that?
Evidence-based purchasing
Foolproof?
We've already done it!
But a useful evidence base to agree on fair pricing for a package?
Other things to think about...
Crisis in academic monograph publishing
Conclusions
My ideal (e) books portfolio:
Much like our (e) journals portfolio in fact
Implications for libraries:
Implications for publishers:
War is declared at the ASA Conference
Charge much less, sell much more
Mark Ware, ASA Conference 2011
"can't pay"
"Tough. Get more efficient (like publishers already have)"
Phil Sykes,
University of Liverpool
"won't pay"
David Hoole,
NPG
David Prosser,
RLUK
Frances Pinter,
TOC 2010