Re: Interview with Springer's Derk Haank

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

I find it very hard to accept the idea that noncirculation is
entirely a function of failed discovery.  I also wonder if high
degrees of discovery for electronic titles are a function of
"grazing," skimming metadata and a few random pages, instead of
reading.  Nothing wrong with grazing and no one, I think, will
fail to support superior electronic discovery, but it is not
clear that we have a common denominator in these comparisons.

Joe Esposito

On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 4:53 PM, Michael Zeoli <mzeoli@ybp.com> wrote:

> Some of my colleagues make the same argument about
> Patron-driven models (PDA) delaying purchasing. This is a
> concern to vendors as well as to publishers. Though there is
> little direct data yet, based on ebook approval plan data (and
> approval plan use in libraries generally), I don't believe that
> PDA will cause any delay. We know that the vast majority of
> books acquired by a library don't circulate.  In a recent
> study of an *ebook* approval plan at an ARL library, about 900
> titles were acquired from roughly 75 publishers in 11 months,
> and most were acquired in the last 6 months of the period.
>
> Nearly 400 of the titles had already been accessed by the end
> of the 11 months (with 1300 user sessions and 18,000 page
> views). This far surpasses the circulation activity we would
> expect for a similar sample of print titles acquired on
> approval. This strongly suggests, to me at least, that if we
> make titles available and discoverable, they will be used
> (libraries experimenting with PDA also report that their
> catalogues are being used far more than they thought).
>
> With approvals, often electronic notification slips are sent in
> lieu of the book because of profile parameters (for UPs in
> general, about half their titles are acquired as auto-ship
> approval books and the other half are ordered; for trade
> presses the approval sales are lower). So, for all those
> titles for which slips are sent to the library, we must wait
> for a library selector to review the slip (sometimes the same
> day it is issued, sometimes once per quarter or once per
> year...) and hopefully place an order.  The patron has little
> to no voice in the matter.
>
> With PDA plans, a broader selection of bibliographic records
> (generally based on a looser profile) go immediately to the
> library catalogue making the content instantly discoverable.
> And books that might never be selected by a collections
> librarian (but still fall within the broad scope of a library
> profile) have a chance to find a reader. If the approval
> ebook use data are any indication, more books are likely to
> have more use than they would in the print world. This does
> give rise to questions of budget for libraries, but before we
> worry too much, we should consider PDA as just another tool.
> Approval book and notification plans are important
> mechanisms, especially considering that 80% of monograph
> content is still available only in print at the time a title is
> published (in the academic monograph vendor world) - and of the
> 20% available in e, only a small portion is PDA-eligible.
>
> A collections librarian and friend said to me recently, "I want
> to support university presses, but if they cannot make their
> content available to the library in the format our patrons need
> when they need it, I'll have to prioritize other content." I
> think we've seen that happen already to some degree. The UPeC
> initiative is an effort to mitigate this, but that's another
> loaf to slice.
>
> Getting back to packages for a moment, it is also worth
> considering that profiling, which underpins both approval plans
> and PDA, can also be applied to packages of content (publisher
> permitting) - an old tool for slicing new bread :-)
>
> Michael Zeoli
> YBP Library Services
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Sandy Thatcher
> Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 10:42 PM
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: RE: Interview with Springer's Derk Haank
>
> PDA may not mean that fewer books are sold overall, but the key
> difference between approval-plan purchasing and PDA purchasing
> is when it happens. The former is at or near the time of
> publication; the latter can stretch out over years. That makes
> a huge difference for any publisher in terms of cash flow.
>
> Sandy Thatcher