A considerable body of library literature deals with many aspects of e-books, such as licensing issues, e-book implementation in academic libraries, and the use of e-books by students and faculty.⁷ In much of this literature, the e-books discussed are aggregations of titles purchased from vendors in package deals and accessible over the Internet.

What few articles do discuss e-readers in academic libraries tend to focus on circulation issues and popularity among users. For example, a literature review by Tees looked at the use of e-book readers at universities, focusing on their use as replacements for textbooks as well as loan policies and the brands of e-book readers being purchased.⁸ Similarly, Waterfield surveyed public and academic libraries to assess the degree to which they have purchased e-book readers and made them available to their users.⁹ While he found widespread use, his survey focused primarily on circulation periods, loan policies, and popularity instead of technical services issues.

An appendix to Waterfield's survey does provide the sequence of procedures followed at Suffolk University when an e-book is purchased for the Kindle.¹⁰ Amazon e-mails a receipt to Suffolk University's head of technical services, who then catalogs the e-book for the local integrated library system. The location of each e-book appears in the catalog as “Kindle.”

No literature describes the impact of e-book readers on workflow in technical services or specifically addresses the cataloging issues associated with e-books stored on e-book readers.

Cataloging e-books of any variety involves decision making in the application of cataloging rules. Bothmann described for each area of bibliographic description the application of such rules to e-books.¹¹ In contrast to the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) approved provider-neutral e-monograph guidelines (discussed below), he considered e-book readers to be direct access devices, much in the same class as CD-ROMs and floppy discs.¹² He made the case for cataloging e-books as unique manifestations rather than facsimiles of their print versions. Bothmann suggested that e-books be classified for purposes of virtual browsing as well as for collection assessment purposes. While detailing the specific cataloging rules well, he did not discuss the kinds of difficulties, many of which concern the challenges of locating basic cataloging data, encountered in the pilot study at OSUL.

Martin and Mundle also addressed the issue of cataloging e-books.¹³ Their focus was on the quality control of vendor-supplied bibliographic records for a vendor-specific packaged collection of e-books.

In 2009, the PCC approved the provider-neutral e-monograph guidelines.¹⁴ These guidelines prescribe an approach to cataloging e-monographs when they have multiple distributors.

Usually, the application of standard cataloging rules would result in the creation of multiple bibliographic records with identical data with the exception of the data for the distributor. The provider neutral guidelines advise omitting specific distributor data and instead use the print edition's cataloging data supplemented by additional fields indicating the electronic nature of the work.

Oregon State University is a land, sea, sun, and space grant institution with approximately 19,000 students and 1,800 faculty. The OSUL holdings include more than 1.4 million volumes, 14,000 serials, and more than 500,000 maps and government documents. A main library and veterinary medicine library on the Corvallis, Oregon, campus are complemented by two branch libraries serving remote facilities of the university.

The libraries acquire approximately 15,000 monographs annually in addition to receiving approximately 5,000 government documents. Approximately 95 percent of the firm-ordered and approval plan monographs have copy on WorldCat (either Library of Congress- or member-contributed) with full-level cataloging including call numbers and subject headings. Most cataloging copy is downloaded in a “fast-cat” process by a paraprofessional, although a shift to shelf-ready books with an accompanying file of bibliographic records is currently underway and will result in moving cataloging functions to the acquisitions unit. Serials are even more likely to have cataloging copy in WorldCat and only rarely require original cataloging. The head of cataloging is the only professional cataloger in the unit, with time split between administering the unit and providing original and complex copy cataloging. The cataloging unit participates in the PCC's Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO), Subject Authority Cooperative Program (SACO), and Cooperative Online Serials Program (CONSER). OSUL contributes catalog records to Summit, the union catalog of the Orbis Cascade Alliance (a consortium of academic libraries in the Pacific Northwest).

The OSUL Strategic Plan calls for the libraries to “change the information landscape at OSU by providing faculty and students with the information they require, whenever and wherever they require it.”¹⁵ Since 2008, OSUL has been actively acquiring packages of e-books from vendors, primarily in the areas of earth and environmental science, biomedical and health sciences, mathematics, and statistics. This e-book purchasing policy complements one of purchasing e-serials whenever possible as OSUL moves from a primarily print institution to an increasingly mixed print-and-electronic one.

For this pilot project, a task force was formed in late spring 2009, and charged by the library's administrative management team with developing a workflow and procedures for purchasing, downloading, and cataloging Kindle e-books. The task force also discussed circulation rules, staff training, and promotion of the Kindles on campus. The three task force members represented collection development, public services, and circulation. The task force consulted with cataloging, acquisitions, and circulation personnel to plan workflow for the Kindle titles through those areas.

In the summer of 2009, OSUL purchased six Kindles: five six-inch Kindles, and one larger Kindle DX. The purchase of Kindle e-books began soon afterward, with cataloging of these titles completed by the cataloging unit head. About midway through the project, after the cataloging unit head had cataloged the first set of fifty-two titles, he trained a paraprofessional in the use of the Kindle and the cataloging of Kindle e-books, including application of the provider-neutral e-monograph guidelines from the PCC.¹⁶ After training, the list of newly purchased titles was sent directly to the paraprofessional for both original and copy cataloging.

OSUL purchased the first set titles before the Kindles were made available for circulation. These included literary classics, popular titles, guides to cities and parks in the Pacific Northwest, study guides for students, style manuals, and introductory works on science. The head of collection development decided to purchase these titles because they would appeal to students and faculty, thus increasing the likelihood of the Kindles’ circulation.

One resource initially purchased for the Kindles was a blog about Portland, Oregon, with daily updates. The issues surrounding the management of this integrating resource proved insurmountable. Updates required daily downloading, but because they could be downloaded by library users, tracking these daily downloads when the device was checked out would have been impossible. In addition, tracking daily updates on multiple devices was considered onerous. Consequently, the blog subscription was cancelled. Newspapers and other serials available on the Kindle presented similar problems with tracking check-in of issues and so subscriptions for these, although initially considered, were not purchased.

Five Kindles were placed in circulation in November 2009, with one of the six-inch Kindles reserved for use in the cataloging unit so that new titles could be viewed readily. Once the Kindles were advertised as available, they were quickly checked out. Users found and requested already-purchased Kindle titles through the library's catalog or via a Kindle webpage on the OSUL website. All of the libraries’ Kindle titles were available on each Kindle. All Kindles circulated for two weeks with no renewals. One staff member in circulation was designated as the lead for training, monitoring the program, and responding to questions.

During the pilot period, from June through December 2009, cataloging problems were noted as encountered by the cataloging unit head. Other information for this paper was gathered from e-mail correspondence, meeting minutes, and interviews with pilot project staff.

In the usual workflow for print monographs (see figure 1), orders are sent to the acquisitions unit for encumbering funds, assigning a purchase order number, placing the order with the vendor or publisher, and creating an order record in the library's catalog. Physical pieces, whether books, DVDs, or CDs, arrive several days to several weeks later. After acquisitions personnel check pieces against invoices, the materials are sent to the cataloging unit. If cataloging copy is available in WorldCat, a library technician 2 downloads a record for the work and edits it. If cataloging copy does not exist, a librarian or library technician 3 creates an original record. After physical processing, the piece is sent to be shelved.

Once the collection development librarian selected Kindle e-books for purchase and passed their titles along to the circulation unit, the workflow developed by the task force differed significantly from that for print books (see figure 2). The basic steps were as follows.

1. Circulation staff purchased the titles from Amazon using a gift card and downloaded the new e-books to each of the Kindles.
2. Circulation staff added the new titles to a LibraryThing collection.
3. Circulation staff notified the cataloging unit as to which titles had been purchased.
4. The cataloging unit completed the cataloging of each title.

Each of these steps is described in greater detail below.

OSUL's experience with acquiring and cataloging e-books on the Kindle has highlighted how these information resources differ from conventional print resources as well as other electronic works. Staff have had to make changes to the traditional workflow to accommodate these titles. Catalogers have grappled with scant or elusive bibliographic information as well as coping with applying cataloging rules to these e-resources.

Traditional library workflows needed to be adjusted significantly. While OSUL has become accustomed to the blurred line between acquisitions and cataloging, the incorporation of the circulation department into technical processing produced a radical departure from past workflows. Good communication between the departments helped to resolve some initial confusion and improve this workflow.

Another radical change to workflow occurred within the acquisitions unit. Acquisitions staff have traditionally handled the issuing of purchase orders, for both print and electronic formats, transmitting these to the book vendor and, if necessary, sending claims for unfilled orders. None of these steps occurs in the workflow for the Kindle e-books, resulting in a great savings of time and effort. The acquisitions unit is now excluded from the acquisition of these particular library resources and does not maintain any kind of accounting trail for them. Order documentation on the Amazon website via the gift card account will make the auditing of these purchases much different from a traditional audit.

The greatest challenge in cataloging Kindle e-books was not so much the application of cataloging rules, but locating the necessary bibliographic data. The need to search for this data in the work itself or on the Amazon website made cataloging less-efficient and very time-consuming because the cataloger must search in several places before concluding that the data do not exist. The Kindle e-books’ lack of print book conventions, including title pages and publication information, presented an additional obstacle to quality cataloging. In more traditional media, scarce bibliographic data would allow the swift creation of a relatively skeletal bibliographic record.

On the other hand, accelerating the cataloging process is possible using the guidelines for provider-neutral e-monograph records, allowing for the derivation of records from those for print versions. Once a cataloger selects a print record, the number of edits required is small and provider-specific information is avoided. Most of the works purchased by OSUL for its Kindles were recent popular works with readily identifiable publication data; the speed at which they could be cataloged helped offset the extensive time consumed by cataloging the works for which such data were difficult to ascertain. A time study could help determine how much time it takes to catalog a Kindle work as compared to other versions in print or on another electronic platform.

E-book readers are still a relatively new phenomenon and, as with many new technologies, come with a variety of proprietary platforms and standards. OSUL's experience with Kindles offers one approach to integrating these new devices into libraries. Despite obstacles, OSUL staff succeeded in creating a new workflow for these resources and ensuring quality cataloging.