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Who are the Winners?Ebook consortial purchasing

Hazel Woodward & Helen HendersonInformation Power Ltd.

Presentation to the Charleston Conference, 7th November, 2013

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Consortia worldwide are struggling to find sustainable and cost-effective business models for purchasing ebooks

JISC Collection, the UK national consortia, has had some successes with the purchase of ebook collections, but less so with individual titles

This pilot is an attempt to trial a specific business model for individual titles, changing publisher driven selection to patron driven selection

Ebook consortial purchasing

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Based on a consortial business model trialled by Max Planck Institute (Germany) and CBUC (Spain)

No data analysed by MPI & CBUC

JISC Collections (UK national consortia) set up one year pilot 2012-2013

Engineering ebooks chosen for pilot

Libraries to purchase ebooks

IPL, as Project Manager, to collect and analyse purchase & usage data

JISC Collections (UK)Ebook Consortia Pilot Project

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Consortium of 6 academic libraries with large Engineering Faculties

6 publishers of engineering books (some large engineering publishers excluded as libraries had existing big deals)

Whenever one of the libraries purchased an ebook, all libraries had access

‘Price multiplier’ negotiated with each publisher. In the pilot this was paid by JISC Collections. In a ‘real life’ consortia it would be split among the libraries

The (very simple) business model

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Libraries & Publishers

Artech House Cambridge University Press

(CUP) Institution of Engineering

and Technology (IET) Taylor & Francis (T&F) Wiley World Scientific Publishing

(WSP)

Cranfield University Loughborough

University Newcastle University Brunel University University of

Southampton University of Liverpool

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Hosting service

Libraries consulted: took time to reach a consensus. (All used multiple ebook aggregator platforms)

Dawson Books (Dawsonera) chosen

Negotiation & agreement: also took time

Implementation (more challenging than expected!)

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The ebooks

Libraries slow to start ordering titles & requested title lists from publishers

Ebook title lists supplied by publishers

Workflow issues for libraries & hosting service

First orders placed December 2012

Implementation

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MARC Records

Research by CIBER & JISC Collections has demonstrated that MARC records in the OPAC are vital to discovery

Delay in provision of MARC records to libraries at start of pilot may have had a bearing on usage

Implementation

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It had been hoped to run the pilot for a full academic fiscal year

In reality the pilot began in earnest in December 2012 & ran until July 2013

Books were being ordered and used

COUNTER ebook usage statistics (BR1 & BR2) were being collected

Finally… the pilot was up and running

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Very high usage of books purchased

98.6% of books were used by at least 1 library

All libraries got more value than they purchased

Percentage bought and not used by individual library averaged 7% - very low compared to recent PDA/evidence-based studies in Germany and the USA which were closer to 85%

So what were the findings (in a nutshell)

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% bought % used

% used but not bought

% bought but not

usedLibrary 1 34% 95% 61% 1%Library 2 25% 52% 27% 11%Library 6 15% 42% 26% 8%Library 4 13% 49% 35% 6%Library 5 13% 27% 15% 9%Library 3 0% 20% 100% 0%

Overall analysis

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No. purchased but not used

No. used but not purchased

No. of library’s purchases used

by othersLibrary 3 72% 189% 94%Library 6 50% 218% 77%Library 4 43% 154% 100%Library 2 42% 305% 100%Library 5 4% 185% 85%Library 1 0% 250% 0%

Purchase Analysis

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Value purchased but

not usedValue used but not purchased

Value of library’s

purchases used by others

Library 3 77% 165% 105%Library 6 51% 176% 104%Library 4 49% 136% 100%Library 2 43% 396% 100%Library 5 4% 195% 118%Library 1 0% 2176% 0%

Value analysis

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Use of purchased

Use of non-purchased

Use by others of library’s

purchasesLibrary 4 2246 4932 3753Library 6 1589 3532 3875Library 5 1491 1633 4675Library 3 320 3828 1271Library 2 252 48 2497Library 1 0 1210 0

Usage analysis

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% of titles bought Av accesses per bookPublisher B 8.1% 2.6Publisher A 5.6% 2.5Publisher C 2.4% 2.7Publisher E 1.8% 2.8Publisher D 1.3% 2.5Publisher F 0.5% 1.5

Publisher analysis

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5 out of the 6 libraries said they would be interested in pursuing consortial ebook purchasing using this business model

In the light of the data they were pleased with both the level of use of titles they had purchased, and their use of titles purchased by other institutions

They would be happy to put money into a consortial ‘pot’ to widen their access to ebook titles (funds permitting)

One librarian commented: “Increased access is the real benefit and saving money is a bonus”

What did the librarians think of the pilot?

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Librarians commented that the important factor in a consortia is having synergy between the libraries (e.g. research/ teaching focused)

The majority favoured subject-based ebook consortia

The portfolio of publishers participating in the consortia was very important

Most favoured a minimum level of financial commitment from participating libraries

What type of consortia?

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The majority of publishers were disappointed with the sales figures

However, on the whole, they were pleased and very interested in the usage data

An interesting finding from the pilot was that none of the publishers examined ebook usage in detail at company level (only ejournal usage)

All publishers said that they only had access to usage data from their own platform – ebook aggregators did not supply them with usage statistics

What did the publishers think?

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In general, the smaller publishers were most enthusiastic…”our role as a publisher is to get our content out there…. we need to get our brand noticed”

All publishers commented that they needed to protect the value of their titles

Of the 3 larger publishers only one was positive about the business model. However, they felt that a variable price multiplier would be necessary to enable them to offer both back list and current high demand titles

What did the publishers think?

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One publisher said they were very interested in evidence based purchasing and would like JISC Collections to pursue that model

Another publisher stated that they did not like the business model saying “it is not sustainable”

They went on to say “we are keen to work with library consortia but we don’t like shared ownership/collections… we would rather give a discount”

What alternative did publishers suggest?

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Librarians. The majority felt that the business model worked well and they got good value-for-money

Publishers. Were not enthusiastic about the business model but suffered no financial detriment

The Consortia. Obtained valuable, unique data about the business model & usage of the shared collection

But the REAL WINNERS were the USERS who had access to much more content… and used it!

Who are the winners?