RE: AAP/Google in Chronicle of Higher Education

[<Toby.GREEN@oecd.org>]

Chuck,

Thanks for your posting. I've just returned from SSP in Boston exceedingly
depressed and disappointed by the book publishing community represented
there. I had hoped to learn some new tricks to help us improve our e-books
offer - but instead found myself preaching and teaching disbelieving book
publishers about what we've been doing since 2000. Much of what we are
doing is along the lines of what you advocate, in particular a move to
chapter-based publishing. At OECD we publish around 150 books annually. In
January 2001 we launched an e-library containing all our books published
since 1998. To begin with they were only available as a single PDF file.
In 2003 we started to break some of the books into chapters, as well as
offer the complete file. Our aim was to enable the various discovery tools
find an individual chapter - just as they find individual articles in
journals. In fact, we are using an e-journal platform to publish our
e-books because we couldn't find an affordable and flexible e-book
platform to do the job. And why did we take this step? Because we didn't
want our books to be drowned out by e-journal articles!

The results are impressive. In 2000 we had around a core set of 250
libraries worldwide buying >60% of our books. Today we have 550 libraries
worldwide with online access to 100% our books - an impressive growth in
reach and accessibility. Around 200 of these libraries still choose to buy
a print collection. Downloads of our books started slowly, I think because
users didn't expect to find books online so weren't looking for them. We
also didn't have a persistent linking system in place making it hard for
librarians to link from their OPACs. In 2003 this changed, we launched our
(persistent) EasyLinks and downloads took off. Last year we delivered more
e-books (or e-chapters) than we did printed books for the first time.
Usage levels are on a par with our e-journals, so you are quite correct -
if book content is delivered in an e-journal-like way usage does increase.

This positive message is one I'm trying to get across to specialist book
publishers - but they seem to find it difficult to accept that an
e-journal model works very well indeed for scholarly monographs. Our
business model is just like e-journals: i.e. multiple-simultaneous access;
no DRM (we deliver standard PDF files); IP access; remote access; walk-in
usage; licence to include excerpts in course packs; e-ILLm - in short, a
licence to use our content as much and as frequently as possible! [For any
book publisher reading this, you may be interested to know that our print
sales between 2001 - 2004 declined at a similar rate to the previous
three-year period but, following a change to the way we promote our books
(and having had some better titles!) they have increased a little since
Nov 2004! Clearly, delivering standard, unprotected PDF files is not
destroying demand for print.]

We've learned that e-books can't be handled exactly like e-journals, but
the discovery principles are the same. We are trying to improve our
systems so that the various discovery systems (Google, Google Scholar,
Scopus, etc) will find our content easily, and the introduction of an
OpenURL system due in 2006 will be another step to making access easier
still. I agree with you that efforts need to be made to improve indexing
systems - but importantly I think they need to be compatible with
e-journal indexing systems because in our experience readers couldn't care
if the content they need comes from a book or a journal.

Books are not easy to break into chapters. We've tried to find ways to
automate our production process so we can break them into chapters easily.
The problem is rooted in a book's structure - lots have a hierarchical
organisation (Part/Section/Chapter) so at what level(s) should they be
broken? So far we've failed to find an automatic process and continue to
break them manually at the end of the production process. We've had to
persuade our authors to provide abstracts for each chapter (or part or
section), something we thought would be difficult, but actually came
readily. We've had to work on the chapter titles so they make sense when
seen out of context with the book in search engine results. Some short
books don't lend themselves to be broken up, so we leave these complete.

Despite doing all this, and providing our EasyLinks, we're discovering
that many librarians are not making the links to their OPACs. We're
planning to introduce downloadable MARC 21 records in 2006 to make this
task easier for librarians, but it doesn't seem to be a standard reflex
for some cataloguers to make the link - I'm sure this will change over
time.

Another oddity we've learned is this. Ask a librarian what they want and
they'll say they want the ability to pick and choose book-by-book. This
presents a huge challenge for publishers since it really means that some
intermediary will have to offer this service (just as in the print world).
This takes control of the way the books are presented and marketed out of
the hands of publishers (and because we couldn't find an intermediary who
could provide the service we wanted, we did our own thing). Yet, as you
will have understood from our sales figures, a great many librarians have
acted differently and subscribed to all our books. The bulk subscription
model sounds a lot like a books 'big deal', but the benefits seem
attractive to a lot of librarians. We are now moving to offer our books
via the e-books vendors to meet the needs of librarians who don't want all
our books - but I think there's room for both the big books deal as well.
Perhaps librarians need to start thinking more carefully about this model
if they really want to work with publishers - without it, you'll have to
work with intermediaries.

The intellectual property question is one that puzzles me. I understand
that problems may exist when Google scans books from libraries since the
copyright owner is not involved. But, if it leads to greater chances of
discovery I think publishers will learn to appreciate the benefits. The
trouble is that it will take time for the benefits to become apparent and
in the meantime everything may get bogged down with lawyers. As for Google
Print, where publishers and Google are working together, here we might be
able to see if greater discovery leads to greater usage (and sales). My
feeling is that for most higher-priced monographs greater sales isn't
really what will happen. Why? Because most Google users are in a hurry and
want access now - if they can't get it they'll move on. Also, and more
significantly, most readers of scholarly monographs have little or no
purchasing power - so connecting from Google Print to online bookshops is
not the ideal situation, the link, as you suggest, should also be to
library systems via Open URLs (just like Google Scholar links to
e-journals). But that's of little use unless librarians are making the
connections to e-books and if e-books remain poorly presented by the
aggregators.

Our next steps will be to enable reference linking from our books (via
CrossRef et al - which will also mean other e-publishers will be able to
link into our e-books when they are cited!); to further extend our
StatLink service (whereby we offer links to Excel files that underly the
charts and graphs in our books; to improve our indexing and search
service; to continue to push our metadata out to other channels to improve
discoverability; to launch an RSS service.

I just wish some more book publishers would join us in doing all this,
it's fun and it works!

Toby Green
Head of Dissemination and Marketing
OECD Publishing
Public Affairs and Communications Directorate
http://www.oecd.org/Bookshop 
http://www.SourceOECD.org  - our award-winning e-library
http://www.oecd.org/OECDdirect  - our new title alerting service
+33 1 45 24 94 15 (phone)/ 53 (fax)
2 rue Andr� Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex 16, France

Find out more about our new Factbook, a compilation of 100 statistical
indicators from across the OECD's work complete with downloadable Excel
spreadsheets: http://www.oecd.org/publications/factbook


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Hamaker, Chuck
Sent: 24 June, 2005 4:42 AM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: AAP/Google in Chronicle of Higher Education

Bob, I'm probably as worried as a librarian can be about the future of the
monograph (no matter what format). Book publishers have been extremely
slow in my opinion, to innovate. I WANT books especially scholarly books,
to survive. What they do can't be done in journal articles i.e. the
multiperspective, the careful development of complex concepts, the pulling
together of an extended informed presentation on the author's topic. This
form of entering into public debate and consciousness is not duplicated by
the article.

AT the same time, as a librarian, I see journal articles swamping whatever
awareness individual students and scholars have of the means and tools of
reasoned articulate, civilized discussion. A large part of this has to do
with HOW journal articles are identified vs. book contents. We have
massive database driven indexes, we have the open URL, and we have special
search tools within databases, and controlled vocabularies, thesauri for
special topic fields.--all these tools make the journal article more
findable, more accessible, and more usable.

How do books take their rightful place in the electronic environment as
significant scholarly sources? So far the major models we have don't
result in very high usage of the content in my experience. The different
silos of e-books aren't very helpful. I realize there are advocates for
e-book usage results, but in my experience, they just don't get the kind
of usage that justifies the kinds of investments being made in e-books.
So, what's the solution? I would suggest right now we know of two basic
things that can enhance the utility of books: one I suggest is purely
technical and absolutely legal, the other, where I think google is coming
down, requires re-engineering the landscape of monographic literature
through a massive indexing project.

On the purely technical level, I want to see tables of contents, which are
often embedded in records in library online catalogs, linking directly to
individual chapters and every other place a TOC appears (like Amazon for
instance). We have tools that index at the chapter level right now, it's
the library catalog and other TOC services. In many ways that is analogous
to title level identification for journal articles but we don't link at
the chapter level out to those electronic chapters.-or instantly identify
the item is print only-though the Worldcat Google indexing COULD be an
automatic link from TOC indexing I guess...for one thing the system of
chapter level access in MOST e-book systems just doesn't support the
zeroing in even at the chapter level. Its sort of similar to where
e-journals were when all publishers would support was site level linking
or journal title level linking. Deep linking is what has made journal
articles instantly accessible. We need on the purely technical level, full
scale linking to usable text in books at least at the chapter level.

On the environmental level, we need much better comprehensive, I think,
indexing. Word by word indexing, as seen in the many indexes in books
comes to mind as one approach. It seems to me this is where google print
and other google approaches comes in. they have the technical expertise to
provide indexing that publishers could be supporting, It's at no cost to
them, and highlights the content in their Intellectual property. Is what
google print, for instance, doing, so different (especially since the text
they show is so un-usable for cutting, pasting, even citing!) from the
hundreds of indexes that indexing databases provide? A structure, I would
remind everyone, that journal publishers didn't have to do much to cause
to come into existence, but stems from a generations long project of
indexing and abstracting practices that by itself supports a myriad of
avenues into journal literatures. I'd argue that google print's scanning
and use of those scans, is analogous to the journal article indexing
already standard practice in the serials literature.

And it can't happen soon enough, if books, even e-books are going to
survive in terms of usage in the millennial generation's idea of where to
go for information. I don't think we have 20 years, or even 10 to debate
the future of the book. Its happening right now, and it can be lost I
would guess in the next 5 years or less.

So Massive indexing of monographs which is what I see google print
actually doing, is critical for the survival--the survival as usable text,
of the book, to keep it from becoming nothing more than an interesting
artifact of civilization.

I'd say if publishers don't want a future for the book then by all means,
pull out the stops and go after google, or any other company audacious
enough to provide indexing--a commonplace for the journal article
literature. On the other hand, look at usage data on e-books, no matter
what platform, and I think you will see the book is not right now in the
same playing field, the same ground, or even the same universe as the
journal article. The book's utility is being drowned out by snippets of
information via articles.

So I think these two approaches:

First: better accessibility from existing tools like catalogs, amazon and
other indexes ala the Open URL structure or fixed URL structure--a purely
technical approach linking at the chapter level everywhere a chapter is
mentioned in sales and finding tools. (including indexing and abstracting
sources the commonly include books)

Second: Massive full text indexing, with enough "context" to let
individuals know if they need to go "get" the book wherever that is(in
lieu perhaps of abstracts?)

The constructive approach I would suggest, is to work with google to link
from the google "print" -actually dumb-print-version to the full text
version at publisher or vendor controlled, metered or subscribed site. Is
that happening? If it is I haven't heard about it.

The whole library and vendor and publisher community has had to be engaged
to create Open URL linking. Why not see if google can support some sort of
standard for linking into non-functional books to functional e-book
linking. They are building the master index (that is what they do) with
their scanning, why not use it to link to the "official" copy or copies
that individuals can actually "use"?

So again, I see the scanning as something other than "scanning" but in
this instance it looks to me like indexing. Scanning the whole item to
provide a "free" index for publishers and book readers and users seems to
me in the best interest of everyone concerned. Journal publishers don't
opt out of journal indexes, because they know it enhances their journal
sales. Why wouldn't the same thing be true of whole book indexing?

PS

Bob, thanks for the primer, it's a good dose of legal reality, but I hope the
legality doesn't impede progress in supporting access to books. WE all have a
lot to gain if massive indexing and promotion of book content is sustainable
legally.

Thanks


Chuck Hamaker
Associate University Librarian Collections and Technical Services Atkins
Library University of North Carolina Charlotte Charlotte, NC 28223 phone 704
687-2825