Survey: The problem of acquiring individual e-book titles for your library

Information Power Ltd (IPL) is currently working on a Jisc project examining the problems that libraries face in finding and acquiring e-books for titles on reading lists. The project will take these findings to the publishers’ associations to facilitate a discussion about how publishers can address the problems and meet the needs of their library customers.

Based on the Digital Access Solutions Report, the findings of the project so far point to a two-fold problem:

  • Discoverability: It is often difficult for libraries to discover if an e-book version is available at all due to metadata issues and patchy distribution via the various aggregator platforms.
  • Acquisition: When e-books versions are available, the acquisition model is not always suitable for library use. For example, non-perpetual licences, titles that are only available as part of a package or access models that are too restrictive.

To help inform this discussions with publishers, we would be grateful if you would take 10 minutes to complete this short survey.

The first part deals with the issues of discoverability, and the second part asks you to rank criteria in the levels of importance for library acquisition of e-books.  Measuring the level of importance will provide critical information in the discussions with publishers.

The e-book requirements were developed at the University of Exeter and draw on work undertaken by Nick Lewis and his colleagues at UEA http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/UKSG/380/A-charter-for-e-books/?n=121b8a3f-e721-4bc0-8354-7ad4d47f99de

We would be grateful for your feedback by the end of May.

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