2017 Charleston Library Conference

The Orbis Cascade Alliance piloted an Evidenced Based Acquisition Approach with Wiley in 2016-2017. Upon completion of the pilot, the Alliance’s E-Book Working Group made content selection decisions to benefit almost 40 distinct institutions using a 3-pronged approach focusing on individual institution usage, broadly used, and overall highly used titles. The Alliance’s E-Book strategies for 2017-18 include: setting up a second EBA pilot, while continuing the first; integrating with GOBI Library Solutions to benefit Alliance members; and other plans for cooperative e-book management for the group of member institutions. All the while, keeping in mind goals for a broad range of content, stable costs, and making titles accessible both to patrons as well as from a technical services perspective.

The University of South Florida (USF) Library maintains multiple DDA and EBA ebook programs as the basis for its collection management strategy in an effort to provide the scope of monographic material required by a large metropolitan research university in the most cost effective manner. In 2010, librarians at USF replaced traditional approval plans with an extensive patron-driven acquisitions program. Leveraging usage data from the DDA program with EBL (now ProQuest Ebook Central) several evidence-based acquisition programs were established with providers such as Wiley, Project Muse, Elsevier, Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis, and Cambridge University Press, as well as consortial EBAs through Coutts and Taylor & Francis. The selection process begins with profiling the DDA and is developed combining factors that satisfy our programmatic requirements. Successful implementation at this scale requires collaborative effort from a community of librarians and staff with diverse skill sets.

These two viewpoints provide a comprehensive perspective of managing multiple ebook acquisition models in both consortium and individual institutions.