Attendees
Janey Chao, Lisa Ellis, Stephen Francoeur, Harold Gee, Joseph Hartnett, Jin Ma, Rita Ormsby, Michael Waldman, Kevin Wolff
Discussion
We had a wide-ranging discussion of ebooks and ebook readers:
- HarperCollins limiting ebook checkouts on titles in OverDrive to 26 times
- Video by public librarians identifying HarperCollins print titles that have circulated
HarperCollins 26+ checkouts
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- criteria we have in mind when we are considering adding an ebook to the library collection:
- # of simultaneous users
- is it a license or a purchase (with hosting fees)
- the kinds of titles where an ebook might make sense:
- reference books
- heavily circulated titles (such as Malcolm X’s autobiography)
- frequently stolen or lost titles
- technical books
- manuals and handbooks
- test prep books
- books on hot button topics
- poetry and short story collections
- literature anthologies
- Sarah Glassmeyer’s blog post (“HCOD, eBook User Bill of Rights and Math“) about whether a boycott of Harper would have any noticeable affect
- ebrary is working on a service that would let users download titles
- Arthur’s blog post about e textbooks
- Flatworld Knowledge
- another CIS class will use the Kindles this spring
- putting public domain works used in the Great Works class on a reader
Duke University Press just released a survey of ebook acquisitions that gives an interesting perspective on how libraries are selecting their ebooks.
For example, 30% of the respondents do not purchase a print copy if they have an e-copy, but 25% do for highly-used titles and 19% do for certain disciplines, indicating in my mind that we are not yet entirely comfortable in relying entirely on an e-book copy.
Pricing (65%) was the main reason not to buy an electronic copy; the next reasons were No demand/patrons prefer print (32%), Dissatisfaction with content platform (31%) and Unacceptable DRM (28%).
Of the librarians who responded 70% did not offer e-book readers.