These short “
pecha kucha-like” sessions will feature 5 PowerPoint presentations of 6 minutes and 40 seconds each. We will have time at the end of the session intended for Q&A for all presenters. Come for a lively, rapid-fire group of talks.
1) Assessing large ebook collections: Is the past a roadmap for developing collections of the future? (Stacy Baggett)In the current climate of dwindling book budgets, practices of collection building for many of us now depend on purchasing ebook collections rather than individual print titles. Because these ebook collections are prepackaged, libraries have less control over individual titles and the quality of those titles. During the summer of 2017, the electronic resources librarian at Shenandoah University conducted an assessment of the library’s major ebook collections. The editors of Choice publish an annual list of best books, typically used as a standard in book collection practices. In this assessment project, the library’s ebook holdings in ProQuest’s Ebook Central (formerly ebrary) and EBSCO’s eBook Academic Collection were compared to Choice Outstanding Academic Titles Lists for five years, from 2012 – 2016. Currently, the library holds approximately 300,000 titles in its ProQuest and EBSCO collections. Using the Choice lists as a standard for comparison, the presenter will help participants adapt these methods in order to evaluate the suitability of their own ebook collections. Participants will learn strategies for building high quality ebook collections appropriate for their institutions and curricula. Questions about determining book title quality and matching titles with Choice and ebook collections will be explored. Participants will learn strategies for evaluating their own ebook collections and techniques for implementing changes in order to build more relevant ebook collections. Implications for collection development policies will be considered. Participants will be invited to respond to survey questions that explore best practices for ebook assessment and collection building.
2) Unfinished Books: Could Libraries Embrace the Plasticity of Ebooks (Ravit David)Books like "Don Juan" by Lord Byron or "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" by Charles Dickens enjoy huge readership even though they are unfinished works whose authors either died before they finished writing them or never really intended to publish them. But, unfortunately, the same argument cannot be made for Ebooks readership especially in cases where Ebooks are received by academic libraries or loaded onto various platforms before their making was completed.
Focusing on cases where Ebooks were changed, updated or removed long after the Ebooks titles were cataloged by libraries and made available to patrons –this paper considers how Ebooks’ ever evolving production changes libraries’ traditional workflows and forces us to be creative, "just in time" thinkers when it comes to Ebooks.
As if Byron and Dickens are still working to finish their great works although we already shelved it, this paper also offers librarians some strategies to deal with unfinished Ebooks and their plasticity without compromising readership in their institutions.
3) E-Book Longevity--Dynamics of E-Books Over Time (Christopher Palazzolo)A substantial number of bibliometric studies have focused upon analyzing the circulation dynamics of print titles in academic library collections. A significant focus of this data collection and investigation is on the use of new, or approval titles or firm orders over certain time increments, as a means to assess the efficacy of such approval plans and/or of librarian anticipatory selection. A few studies have begun to approach such collection assessment on e-books to determine if their circulation (use) parallels print book circulation and use over time. For example, do e-titles chosen by selectors have a higher use than those in broad subject or publisher packages? Does the proportion of use of a package over time mirror that of a “package” of approval titles over the same amount of time? Of course, there are significant differences in e-book vs. print use (and what one can measure), so any conclusions will remain very tentative. This presentation will focus on several e-book packages, as well as e-book firm ordering, at Emory to see if any discernable circulation dynamics can be found, and what, if any, similarities there are with print circulation studies.
4) Playing the Field: Life After We Broke Up with the STL (Doug Way)In 2015 the University of Wisconsin-Madison eliminated a successful short-term loan-based ebook acquisition program and replaced it with a multi-layered access and ownership strategy that relies heavily on subscriptions, different evidence-based and demand-driven acquisition models, and purchased publisher collections. This session will describe the library’s ebook strategy and its impact on users and library staff since it was implemented. It will also compare and explore the effectiveness of these different acquisition models and how the library’s ebook acquisition program continues to evolve within a larger collections-as-a-service framework.
5) Beyond Cost Per Use: Exploring Multivariable E-Resource Assessment (Courtney McAllister)The converging pressures of dwindling budgets, increasing subscription costs, and shifting user expectations has intensified the impact of collection management decision making. Assessing e-resource subscriptions is an integral part of any library’s collection management process, though it is especially important in academic environments. While CPU can be a straightforward and informative measure to consider, that lone data point might not reveal the true value of an e-resource. This presentation outlines a multifaceted assessment strategy that recognizes the various merits of an e-resource, such as supporting accreditation, providing access to material not easily obtained through resource sharing channels, discoverability and platform ease of use, and the quality of vendor support or responsiveness. Incorporating CPU data into a more holistic rubric might require additional time and energy, but the resulting decisions to renew or discontinue subscriptions will be more nuanced and indicative of an underlying commitment to curating distinctive and accessible e-resources. Attendees will be encouraged to critique and/or expand upon the multivariable assessment criteria, to further the wider discussion of how libraries are defining and analyzing the value of their collections.
