E-books:  definition, selection, users

Presented at ALCTS "Ebook Workflows: Selection to Access" program

ALA Annual Conference, June 28, 2008

 

 

E-books

What is an e-book?

Who selects e-books?

What do our users want from e-books?

 

What is an E-book?

• Content presented in e-format and in one complete unit
• A print monograph issued in e-format
• A "material type" GMD - [electronic resource]
• Example:
  • Knowledge management in modern organizations, ed. by Murray Jennex.  Hershey, PA: Idea Group Pub., 2007.
    • package
    • individual title

 

Think Differently

• digitized materials
  • Google Book Project
• Institute for the Book
  • http://www.futureofthebook.org
  • "networked" books through use of blogs, e.g. GAM3R 7H3ORY

• Labyrinth Project (UCLA)
  • http://college.usc.edu/labyrinth/
  • Mysteries and Desire: Searching the Worlds of John Rechy
• Moveable texts
  • flash poetry
• Integration of text, images, film clips, etc.
  • text with images vs. images with text (digital storytelling)
  • http://www.inms.umn.edu/elements/
  • http://www.coe.uh.edu/digital-storytelling/
  • e-book vs. database, e.g. Alexander Press
• Combination creations
  • David Goldberg's forthcoming book
• Web sites
  • LC's American Memory Project
  • Whitman Archive

 

What is an E-Book?

• Content presented in e-format and in one complete unit
• Multiple definitions
  • Content-focused
  • Format-focused
  • Transition to something not yet invented
  • Not the narrow definition above

• Future?
  • Commercialization of these new inventions
  • More reader/audience participation in the creation
  • Continued shift from peer-review prior to publication to peer-review during and after issuance

 

Who Selects?

• Packages
  • vendor / publisher
  • consortium
• Individual titles
  • consortium
  • individual selector
• Digitized books
  • vendor / selection committee
  • availability, copyright, physical condition
• User requests

 

What do student users want?

• 2008 global Student eBook Survey by ebrary
• http://www.ebrary.com/corp/newspdf/ebrary_student_survey.pdf
• Question 13:  How important are the following features to e-books?  3,039 respondents
  • searching, anytime access, off-campus access, ability for more than one student to use an e-book at the same time, downloading to laptop, copying and pasting, printing, zoom and scale, highlighting, automatic citations, ability to email text, annotating, book reviews, multimedia, ability to share ntoes, downloading to hand held device, collaborative tools, personal bookshelves, shared bookshelves

 

What do faculty users want?

• 2007 Global Faculty eBook Survey by ebrary

 

What do librarians want?

• 2007 Global eBook Survey by ebrary (library survey)

 

Access both through the cover letter at the student survey URL.

 

What do my student users want? - IF they know what an e-book is

• remote access
• anytime, anywhere access
• ability to download, print
• ability to identify easily the exact text that fits their assignment
• ability to cut and paste as much text as they want
• ability to email to themselves a citation in their format of choice or at least APA and MLA, just as they do in databases
• ability to borrow a title that's not owned by their particular library, either through their consortium or interlibrary loan

 

What does the library want?

• cost value
• ability to integrate e-books technically
• handshaking among e-books and the catalog, federated search tool, web site, etc.
• something that will download to students' computers without undue difficulty
• easy authentication
• enough simultaneous users to prevent students from thinking there's a technical problem
• archiving
• assistive technology
• what the users wants

 

Issues - What about ...?

• disappearing books
• disappearing chapter within books
• individual contracts
• a "complete unit" with an ongoing platform fee - is this really a monograph?
• fractionation of information
• defining an e-book for some library purpose, when, ultimately, it may be impossible to tell and we may be the only ones left who care

 

Role of Acquisitions with E-books

• Keeping up with and understanding the evolution that's underway
  • do we ever give up formats?
  • understanding that the pigeon-holes we've used for years aren't going to absorb all the new inventions that are coming
  • understanding what we're acquiring
    • something fixed in time or evolving
    • a "book" or a "bite"
    • a purchase, a rental, or, simply, an acquisition
  • making contracts work with the user in mind
    • more of them
    • more complex

 

 You

are at the crossroads

 

Contact information:

 

Aline Soules

Cal State East Bay

aline. soules (at) csueastbay.edu

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copyright Aline Soules 2008

under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/