Academic E-Books: Publishers, Librarians, and Users. Eds. Suzanne M. Ward, Robert S. Freeman, and Judith M. Nixon. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2016. 360 p. $29.95 softcover (ISBN 978-1-55753-727-0)
In their introduction to Academic E-Books: Publishers, Librarians and Users, editors Ward, Freeman and Nixon list the potential promises of e-books to libraries: they cannot be lost or damaged, they do not require staffing to check-in and out and shelf, they take up no space, they can be purchased on demand, they can be checked out by multiple users, and they are often searchable. These promises are particularly enticing when so much scholarship is done through online journal databases and when library service models are shifting from a focus on physical collections to an emphasis on creating spaces for collaborative scholarship. However, e-books also present challenges that the editors summarize in two statements: “1) lack of sufficient content and 2) users’ stated preference for print books in many cases” (2). The Academic E-Books contributors flesh out these issues through specific examples from the publishing industry, libraries, user experience and case studies. They also demonstrate how libraries are combatting challenges to successfully integrate, and in some cases replace print with, e-book collections.
In “An Industry Perspective: Publishing in the Digital Age,” Vassallo summarizes the publishing industry as it stood in the United States in 2013. Physical book sales accounted for the majority of publishers’ revenue. However, e-books showed promise in the consumer publishing sector as recreational readers shifted their purchases of mass-market paperbacks to the electronic format. In scholarly publishing, where the major market is academic libraries, e-book sales are complicated. Libraries must sift through issues such as perpetual versus subscription access, consortial purchasing, and demand driven acquisitions, which slows e-book sales. In many cases publishers’ e-book offerings are inadequate to meet libraries collections needs. Sanfilippo explains the lack of adequate content from the university press perspective in “Production, Marketing, and Legal Challenges: The University Press Perspective on E-Books in Libraries.” The tools traditionally used to produce print books do not translate to e-books, and the labor involved in digital file creation and submission adds costs. Digitizing back list titles—works that are crucial to the sustainability of university presses—is further complicated by securing permissions, copyright and author contracts.
E-book aggregators have somewhat simplified e-book integration into libraries. They offer flexibility through pricing tiers and choice between perpetual access and annual subscription. Many libraries adopted Patron Driven Acquisitions (PDA) or Demand Driven Acquisitions (DDA) programs. Predictably, unmediated patron use of titles fuels librarians’ fears of uncontrolled spending. As demonstrated by the University of Iowa in “Patron-Driven Acquisitions: Assessing and Sustaining a Long-Term PDA E-Book Program,” successful programs manage costs by constantly evaluating the titles available and removing titles that are unused. Short-term loan models also moderate spending as loan fees are set at a percentage of the title’s list price. PDA aligns with contemporary attitudes toward collection development that acknowledge patrons are the best at choosing what titles other patrons will use, not librarians. In other words, e-books that are used enough to reach auto-purchase are usually titles that will receive additional use and justify their cost.
Traditionally libraries have been supplemented gaps in their collections and met patron demands through interlibrary loan (ILL). Though e-books are not easily adaptable to this service, pioneering libraries are developing creative solutions to ILL’s limitations. Orbis Cascade Alliance, written about by Carlisle Fountain in “E-Books Across the Consortium: Reflections and Lessons From a Three-Year DDA Experiment at the Orbis Cascade Alliance,” uses a DDA program for e-books with the stated goal of increasing consortial ownership of titles deemed useful by patrons as demonstrated by high use. Members contribute to a central fund, and the auto-purchase trigger is easily adjusted to accommodate different budgets. Occam’s Reader, a collaborative project described by Litsey et al. in “The Simplest Explanation: Occam’s Reader and the Future of Interlibrary Loan and E-Books,” enables the lending of e-book content through protected file sharing and is easily integrated into the standard ILL workflow.
From the user perspective, there is general consensus around the value of e-books: they are great for searching, discovery and quick reference but are less ideal for sustained scholarly use. As Clark states in “A Social Scientist Uses E-Books for Research and in the Classroom,” many people think print books are just a better “cognitive fit” (202). Technical issues and inconsistency across platforms endemic to e-books frustrate users that expect them to have the same conveniences as electronic journal articles. “Some of the drawbacks are practical issues that are likely to diminish as e-book technology adapts to suit the humans who use it. For now, humans must adapt to e-books to use them effectively” (195). A general lack of awareness of e-books is an additional barrier to use, and here the onus falls on librarians to promote e-book collections and ensure that they are properly integrated into discovery systems. Thomas and Chilton emphasize this point in “Library E-Book Platforms Are Broken: Let’s Fix Them,” writing “when libraries purchase content encased in poor interfaces and behind artificial barriers, it is a form of censorship” (261).
The case studies concluding the anthology demonstrate that in most cases, a shift to digital-only acquisitions will not fully satisfy user preferences and needs. Through “access acquisition,” Harvard’s Widener Library often acquires the same material in both print and electronic formats. In “Of Euripeded and E-Books: The Digital Future and Our Hybrid Present,” Uziel, Esser, and Connor Sullivan write “print and e-book preferences can overlap depending on a user’s research activities, and how e-book collections supplement rather than supplant print ones. This is particularly important for traveling scholars and institutions with research centers or libraries elsewhere” (284). Additionally, publishers need to make a larger percentage of scholarly titles available as e-books for an all-electronic acquisition program to ever work. This is imperative with the rise in distance education programs. In “E-Books and a Distance Education Program: A Library’s Failure Rate in Supplying Course Readings for One Program,” Nixon shows that her library was unable to meet students demand for course readings with their electronic holding because more than half the books needed were not even available for purchase in the digital format.
Academic E-Books is a solid introduction to the history and evolution of e-books in academic libraries. It is well organized and the different perspectives of publishers, libraries and users give a holistic picture of the challenges and opportunities e-books present. Though the anthology was published in 2016, many of the papers are older and describe technologies that have likely evolved to be more responsive. Regardless, practitioners will relate to many of the contributors’ findings and will be inspired by their questioning and creative problem-solving.—Anna Pinks (anna.pinks@greensboro.edu), Greensboro College, Greensboro, North Carolina