Ebooks and ProspectorProspector Directors Annual Meeting

George MachovecExecutive Director

Colorado Alliance of Research LibrariesNovember 8, 2012

What is a Book?

• A book is a set of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of ink, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side (Wikipedia)– A container for information– Is it defined by a publisher?– Is it defined by size or number of pages– Is it defined by its format (paper, digital, analog)– How is it different from reports, serials, documents….

What is an ebook?

• A book produced in electronic or digital format is known as an ebook (Wikipedia)– How do you spell its shorthand version – ebook,

eBook, Ebook, e-book?– Is it defined differently if read on a computer

screen, ebook reader, listened to, etc.– Is it an ebook if it contains embedded audio or

video? What if it’s only audio or video?– Definitions are getting muddled!

More Confusion

• Our online catalogs and discovery systems mask from the reader what our digital content is– Most don’t carefully read the MARC record– Our format icons (if used) are not universal– Reports, large monographs, pamphlets and other

e-content all look essentially the same in our portals

Frustration for the End-User

• Why can’t I access an ebook? • Who controls my access

– The library?– The publisher?– Some intermediate organization?

• I can sometimes get into ebooks and sometimes I can’t. Why?• I go to Amazon, Apple or Google Books and I can always get to

a book ($) but there often are not available copies of ebooks to borrow at my library. Why?

• If another library owns an ebook why can’t you lend it to me or give me temporary access like printed books (ILL)?

Books and Ebooks/Copyright

• Intellectual content is controlled by copyright law– In the printed world long standing laws (e.g. fair use)

have defined proper use which, among other things, allows libraries to exist and do interlibrary loan

– In the digital world, the distribution of content can be more tightly controlled by publishers and vendors and libraries sign contracts which limits our use – these limits are often much more restrictive than traditional fair use provisions

Public Domain

• In U.S. copyright law anything published before 1923 is in the public domain– 1923 is currently frozen (Mickey Mouse)

• In the U.S. anything published by federal, state and local governments is in the public domain

• There are many “orphan” works where the publisher and/or author cannot be easily found and materials are in limbo

Prospector and ebooks

• Prospector currently has almost 12 million unique titles and 30 million item records (Amazon Kindle boasts of 1.75 million unique titles)– About 3.7 million are tagged as “electronic

resource” – About 1/3 of Prospector is for digital resources

and it is the fastest growing sector

Prospector and ebooksWhat Can Everyone Use?

• Public domain/open access titles such as– Project Gutenberg – ERIC ED documents (>450,000 titles)– OSTI/Energy Citation Database records (>250,000 titles)– NASA Technical Reports (>24,000 titles)– Historic GAO reports (>10,000 titles)– Other Federal, state and local documents (hundreds of

thousands)– As Prospector libraries locally load these valuable

resources, everyone has access!

Prospector and ebooksWhat is limited?

• Most ebooks from commercial publishers and aggregators– Limited to users of that library (will be challenged

to authenticate)– If books are from the same aggregator (e.g.

ebrary, EBL, EBSCO eBooks, Overdrive) they will usually accumulate on a single record in Prospector

When Can I Access a Title?

• All Ebooks flow into Prospector from a local library and copies (links) accumulate under a single bib record – You can access “for sure” if you have a card from

that library to get through the authentication challenge

– Public domain? It’s not clear but millions are!– Click on a link – if you get in you are OK to access

Prospector ebook challenges

• The Master Record URL may or may not be the link you need– Always OK if open access (but you won’t know

unless you click on it)– Must click on institutional links if you have a

library card from that library for authenticated• Libraries label their links differently – no

uniformity

Open Access

Only accessible to two libraries

Downloading?

• Can I download an ebook to an e-reader? Maybe….– Does the publisher or aggregator have a download

option (or must I view it on their Website)– What ebook reader do you have? (Kindle, Nook,

iPad, Sony, smart phone app, etc)– Different publishers and aggregators have

different techniques for downloading

Lending of Springer eBooks

•Eleven libraries license the Springer ebook package now with backfiles to 2005 (~45,000 titles)•The titles are lent to the non-subscribing libraries in the Prospector system •About 100 titles are lent per month•PDFs are sent to patron’s owning library with no-DRM or other restrictions (allowed in contract)

Colorado AllianceDDA Pilot

• Demand Driven Acquisitions Pilot– 9 academic libraries– Working through YBP with ebrary and EBL– Publishers selected for each aggregator– 6 Short Term Loans (STLs) before purchase at 10-

15% of retail cost of book– When purchase is triggered, 2.5 times multiplier

of cost of book will be paid to allow all 9 libraries to have perpetual access

Colorado AllianceDDA Pilot

• Free previews of books (5 minutes for EBL and 10 minutes for ebrary)

• Pilot launched in May 2012• No ebook lending to non-pilot participants but

would like to address this issue in the future– Could STLs be used to provide “lending” in

Prospector– How does the money flow?

Oxford Scholarship Online

• OSO titles licensed by 9 Alliance libraries• Contract allows any public library or

community college in Colorado to have free access riding on the coat tails of Alliance contract– This was their counter to ILL provisions– Started September 2012– Contact Oxford University Press

Cool Things

• Google Books Preview for millions of titles in Prospector/Encore

• Prospector Classic has “Find More Resources” to link to Amazon, Google, OCLC and more

Advice

• Be sure to contribute your MARC records for ebooks to Prospector– Many of your patrons go directly to Prospector!– All authenticated resources have the same

protection as in your local catalog– If you don’t contribute all of your records, when

your patrons search Prospector they won’t be seeing everything you own

Advice

• When you contract for ebooks think about Prospector and resource sharing– In the move from print to digital if we sign away all

of our rights, the publishers have won– Try to get ILL rights– Let’s look out for each other– No one solution will fix everything, we’ll need to

fight this battle one contract at a time

Future

• HathiTrust OAI harvesting in Prospector– Will bring in several million public domain ebooks

from the largest universities (a spin off from the Google Books scanning initiative)

• Look for good public domain collections to load on behalf of everyone

• We will continue to work with Innovative Interfaces on improving ebook presentation and usability in Encore