RE: Interview with Springer's Derk Haank

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

A few comments for the sake of clarity regarding my 2 posts:

1.The use data compares better with a 'rate-of-acceleration' 
model than with a 'constant-velocity' model, i.e. there were not 
900 books available during the entire 11-month period.  The 
number grew to 900. Not surprisingly, 75% of user sessions (66% 
of page views) came from the 500 titles available after 7 months. 
The data was gathered immediately at the close of the 11 month 
period which allowed only minimal opportunity for the titles 
added at the end of the period to find users.

2.The point of the first 2 posts was absolutely not to support 
Patron-Driven models above others, but to suggest PDA utility to 
libraries as an alternative to expensive packages that are 
challenging library budgets, and also to remind ourselves that 
*profiling* (Alix Vance's "content curation") underpins PDA as it 
does other collecting tools.  We must bear in mind 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."  All the other tools, including approval book and 
notification slip plans, but the package model too, have their 
place in building collections.

3.As for drawing print and e use comparisons, these numbers only 
get you so far as Joe Esposito points out.  My aim was to 
question the commonplace that PDA will delay sales, a concern for 
publishers (and vendors).  Data we are gathering more and more of 
shows that the opposite is more likely.  What happens to a print 
book once checked out - how many 'page views' it gets and how it 
is used exactly - is impossible to know.  With eContent it's a 
little better - we can say that of the "grazed" titles here, 350 
of the 400 had more than one page view, and we could continue 
slicing that loaf, but that's another a meal for another table - 
perhaps in the Scholarly Kitchen? :-)

Michael Zeoli
YBP Library Sevices

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of
Joachim.Meier@ptb.de
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 10:55 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Interview with Springer's Derk Haank

"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."

18.000 page views (in ebooks) account for simple browsing pages 
and for real reading of valued pages. Browsing printed books at 
the shelves also surpasses circulation activity. Also have we no 
idea how many pages of loaned printed books got browsed and read.

If we compare on page level, usage of 400 printed (shelved or 
loaned) books within 11 month will not be far less than 18.000.

Dr.-Ing. Joachim E. Meier
Head of Library
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB)
38023 Braunschweig  GERMANY


>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