RE: Interview with Springer's Derk Haank

["Michael Zeoli" <mzeoli@ybp.com>]

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


>This thread converges nicely with the one on 'Limitations of
>Google Search.' Reports from the field indicate that the economy
>is taking its toll on the sale of large publisher-direct book
>packages to academic libraries.  Even extraordinary discount
>offers are encountering resistance.
>
>The business model for book aggregators in the academic library
>market, from Richard Abel, to Academic Book Center, Blackwell,
>YBP, Franklin, Midwest, Ambassador, Coutts, Casalini,
>Harrassowitz, etc., has been built around "content curation," aka
>"profiling." The profiling process has been a core service to aid
>the efficient discovery and acquisition of content.  As content
>has moved online and technological support has grown ever more
>complex, the number of traditional companies has dwindled even as
>new ones emerge (e.g. EBL, Netlibrary-EBSCO, ebrary-ProQuest).
>
>New technology is giving rise to new models, such as Patron- or
>Demand-Driven plans, also based on profiling, which augment and
>sometimes replace portions of approval notification and books
>plans. The new models do not mean that old ones will disappear or
>that fewer books will be sold, but simply that library collecting
>has more tools at its disposal to meet its responsibilities
>(budgets and the current increased costs of eContent will
>determine whether fewer books will be sold).
>
>Sharp declines in library budgets, extraordinary discounts being
>demanded of publishers for content packages, and emerging
>technologies supporting ever more sophisticated business models
>pose questions to libraries, library consortia, and publishers
>alike regarding the purpose and costs of some large packages.
>As Alix Vance wrote: "there will always be those who seek more
>and better."
>
>Michael Zeoli
>YBP Library Services