A twitterature




Librarians: @JISC Collections Help! Too many students and not enough textbooks, asked publishers for electronic but no go

JISCCollections: @Publishers What's the score? 

Publishers: @JISCCollections Show us the money and demand. Electronic = no print sales. 

Librarians: JISCCollections: @Publishers How do you know? 

Publishers: @Librarians @JISCCollections RT: How do you know? 

JISCCollections: @Publishers Ok, lets find out. Give us your e-textbooks and we will gather evidence of impact and demand. 

Publishers: @JISCCollections Ok. :) 

JISCCollections: @Librarians Word up. Publishers are go. Join us. 

JISCCollections: Project a go: www.jiscebooksproject.org. 

Librarians: @JISCCollections WTF are these? :(

JISCCollections: @Librarians MARC records from suppliers. 

Librarians: @JISCCollections :( Poor quality. No ISBNs, links incorrect . . . 

JISCCollections: @Librarians We fix. 

Librarians: @JISCCollections :) Thanks. 

JISCCollections: @Publishers @Librarians Success! 52,000 responses to users surveys - biggest e-book user survey EVER! 

JISCCollections: @Librarians Big News! DLA evidence proves library no. 1 access point to e-books. 

JISCCollections: @Publishers +50% users dip in and out for quick fact extraction. Indicates e-books supplement print at mo. Happy days! Bring out the e-textbooks. 

Publishers: @JISCCollections Impact not conclusive but looking forward to finding out more in business model trials with you. 

JISCCollections: @Publishers @Librarians Alert! Focus groups confirm users confused and frustrated by library and publisher platforms.
 
JISCCollections: @Publishers @Librarians Take heed. Time for us to improve the user's experience and meet expectations and quick. Collaborate and listen. 

JISCCollections: Get it first! Final report on the JISC national e-books observatory project http://www.jiscebooksproject.org/reports/finalreport. 

JISCCollections: Order free print copies of final report at http://www.jiscebooksproject.org/reports/report-order-form. 


A bit of methodology
licensed e-books in 4 subject areas for 2 years
benchmarking user surveys in Jan 08 and Jan 09
deep log analysis on MyiLibrary platform
focus groups with students, teachers and librarians
analysis of library circulation data
analysis of retail print sales


£600k = 36 e-books
business and management
engineering
medicine
media studies
10,000 e-book control group
A little quiz
Q1: We studied the behaviours of users in 4 subject areas over a year – business and management, engineering, medicine and media studies. Which subject was the highest user of e-books we licensed?

a.Business and management studies
b.Medicine
c.Media Studies
d.Engineering
 
Q2: We undertook two user surveys (combined responses of 52,000) where we asked users to self report on their behaviour and use of e-books. In one question we asked them how they get hold of e-books. Which of the below got the highest response?
a. Free of the internet
b. From a friend or colleague
c. Own university library
d. Another library
e. Bought a copy

Q3: In the user surveys we asked them to think about the e-books that they have read recently and to answer how much of the e-books they read online. Select the most popular answer.
a. Read the whole e-book
b. Dipped in and out of several chapters
c. Read one whole chapter
d. Read several whole chapters
e. Looked at the e-book briefly

Q4: In the surveys, users were asked to say how they read the e-book. Did most users
a.Read from the screen
b.Print out and read
c.Did a bit of both

Q5: In our deep log analysis of the MyiLibrary platform we could observe real time behaviours (not self reported). What did we find was the average time spent viewing an e-book?
a.5 minutes
b.13 minutes
c.20 minutes

Q6: We could identify how long users spent viewing a page within an e-book. Which statement below is true?
a.83% of users spent less than one minute on a page
b.6% of users spent less than one minute on a page

Q7: During what period of the day did users tend to view e-books?
a.Morning (9 am – 11am)
b.Lunchtime (12 – 2pm)
c.Afternoon (2pm – 6pm)
d.Evening (6pm – 9pm)

Q8: We analysed the impact on the retail sales of the print equivalents of the e-books we licensed for the project to see if free at the point of use (unlimited simultaneous) had a negative impact on print sales. What did we find out?
a.There was no negative impact on print sales
b.There was a negative impact on print 

And the answers are
average 13 mins
Answer 1
Answer 2
Answer 3
Answer 4
Answer 5
Answer 6
83% less than 1 minute
Answer 7
Business models for e-textbooks
Discoverability and Accessibility
Answer 8
8 textbook publishers
10 universities
3 e-book aggregators
17 core textbooks in a range of subject areas


£200 million v £50 million
“Yes, they’re complicated, they’re inconsistent, because some give you unlimited user access, some say no you can have five only and other ones will say you can buy individual titles whilst others say you’ve got to buy five or nothing”

“I just feel that their models haven’t been designed in discussion with librarians – I mean normally when you have a product that you are trying to sell to somebody, you go out and talk to them and find out what they want”

“…and then you’ll get other suppliers offering a totally different model, for example, so many credits and they’ll be renewable annually”

In contrast to the US, there is a great deal of diversity in the approach to learning in UK universities, making it difficult to define a ‘core’ textbook. A textbook might be required reading / core text at one  UK university , but supplementary reading at another

About the trials
E-book platforms & interfaces
Put the complicated stuff behind and bring simplicity to the forefront

Don't assume you know your users, KNOW your users!
The design of an interface needs to be developed around how users actually use content rather than being dictated by DRM. 

•Students very rarely use advance searching or expand the table of contents
•They have multiple tabs open in their browser to consult multiple texts and content
•They don’t use the note facilities as they don’t want to have all their notes in different places
•They don’t make good use of citation assistance as it doesn’t meet the format they require for their institution and just want to copy and paste it rather than have to open another tool
•They don’t want to have to use two navigational activities (scrolling and the next page button)
•They get frustrated with printing restrictions
•They find that tables and images do not handle well and zooming often destroys page format
•They want pages to load quickly
‘Participants from the studied groups tended to use e-books but they abandon the source as they did not know what to do’ 
UBiRD

Students are ‘navigating from one system to another - all of which have different functionalities and different bells and whistles with respect to searching, limiting, indexing, saving etc and it is confusing for users....users have to literally re-frame their minds when moving from one system to another and this require patience, persistence and is time consuming.’ (UBiRD)
I’ve come across an interface of a book where it was available as a PDF single page by single page – screw that! I know where I can get the whole book! (Student)
Best practice guildelines
and 
A common set of licensing terms and conditions for course text e-books that are easy to understand
 - help reduce time and effort
 - enable better communication to users
 - address archival access 
 - include standards such as COUNTER, plagiarism checking, accessibility
 - quality metadata that helps discovery


Licensing 
Top 10 tips
1.challenge all your assumptions about your cutsomers
2.look after your brand &  manage your reputation
3.use technology to do what you do better
4.bring all the business with you
5. use the JISC model licence for e-books
6. get rid of DRM
7. get a diologue going with librarians
8. provide customisable marketing materials
9. experiment with business models
10. develop user centric design 
high peaks and troughs of use