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- No clear generally accepted method
- Many ordering packages or any continuation costs through their electronic resource or serials/continuations workflow
- License reviews varied depending on whether the institution had a separate group to handle that responsibility
- General desire to handle single title monograph ordering through established print order process. (This depends on having licenses in place so there doesn't have to be title by title license review)
- Works for YBP or Coutts/MyiLibrary if title is available through aggregators
- Difficult for selectors to identify continuing costs -
- Tech services redirects order requests - requires advanced staff training/knowledge.
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6. Are you currently ordering ebooks through aggregators (e.g. NetLibrary, ebrary, EBL)? Directly from publishers (Wiley, Springer, Elsevier, etc)? Through a book purchasing vendor (e.g. YBP, Coutts)?
- For the most part one can say that our respondents Respondents are doing all three:
- ordering through aggregators,
- directly from publishers
- through a book purchasing vendor.
- Given the fact that those respondents using GOBI for title-by-title searching are typically purchasing a title from either Ebrary, NetLibrary, or EBL, the distinction between an aggregator and a purchasing vendor is cloudy at best.
- MyiLibrary itself can probably be considered an aggregator and a purchasing vendor simultaneously.
- How an ebook is obtained is direclty directly related to how it is made available.
- For title-by-title acquisition, respondents indicated a preference for odering ordering through a purchasing vendor. If the purchasing vendor offered seveal several options with respect to platform or aggregator, an individual respondent might have indicated a favorite, but among all respondents there appeared to be no clear favorite. In general, for title-by-title purchasing, going directly to the publisher was a last resort. On the other hand, respondents
- Respondents readily contacted publishers directly when they were interested in obtaining subject packages of ebooks. OhioStateUniversity's relationship with OhioLINK is a special case.
7. Are you ordering e-book packages, single title e-books, or both?
- All libraries interviewed are ordering both e-book packages and "one-offs".
8. How are you handling special ordering and payment considerations related to sub-categories of e-books, such as e-textbooks (special licenses), e-reference books (ongoing maintenance fees), o-books (xml, personalization features), local downloadable pdf's (may require access control), e-book series (continuation po's)? For example, many e-reference books now require annual payments to maintain or upgrade access.
- Virtually no one is buying e-textbooks and few have any experience with o-books
- Libraries are split between two ways of handling e-reference ongoing fees. Some have no problem paying ongoing fees for resources that are updating (and these fees usually come out of serial funds), and others will make an one time purchase for an edition and then skip a year or two before making another one time purchase
- Few libraries have done much with how to handle down loadable download-able pdfs (there were 2 exceptions)
9. How important is interface when deciding whether you will purchase a title or package and from whom? There was a mixed
- Mixed response to this question.
- Responses ranged from the interface being very important to only somewhat important.
- Many reported that they try to have a consistent interface for end users.
- Everyone, with the exception of one responder said that if the e-book content is needed and not available on a preferred interface, they would
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- plan to buy the e-book anyway. One person indicated that if the interface did not meet with certain technical specifications, they would not purchase the e-book.
10. How are you handling the pre-order search/verification process and vendor assignment for single title e-book orders? The majority
- Majority of respondents indicated that for title-by-title acquisitons, selectors/bibliographers conducted the pre-order search/verification step.
- Some respondents acknowledged doing this step but did not specify whether the people involved were acquisitions personnel or selectors/bibliographers.
- One respondent stated that since they only ordered subject packages of titles, they did not worry about title duplication as such.
- Those respondents who regularly use GOBI (YBP) or MyiLibrary (Coutts) for doing title-by-title ordering used these vendors' web-based utilities to do their duplicate searching.
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- Some respondents also checked directly with publishers' sites although it is unclear under what circumstances this was done. Several respondents mentioned that searching WorldCat/OCLC was not useful for this purpose.
11. What are your policies for ordering e-books for e-reserves? Are you aware of any problems in this area? The
- The responses for this question were varied:
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- Different libraries needed to quickly adopt certain sets of procedures to answer a recent demand for e-reserve titles and often chose to go with a familiar non-reserve solution in order to provide access for a few rushed items.
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- General need for standardization and a more comprehensive solution for the problem of multi-usage and "turnaways".
- Currently libraries use different methods to evaluate and solve this concern:
- some order a multi-usage copy to begin with
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- others rely on the vendor or on their own count to assess when they should buy another copy for e-reserve.
12. Are you acquiring e-books on a subscription basis or ownership basis or both? All
- All libraries interviewed are acquiring e-books on a subscription and ownership basis, with a preference for ownership.
13. Do you have concerns regarding the difference between perpetual access vs. perpetual ownership? Do you have a plan in place for what to do if you have perpetual ownership without perpetual access (local storage)? Libraries
- Libraries are aware of the issue but have not actively worked to have a plan in place in case they would have to locally load content.
- Some hope that Portico or a consortial archiving answer will alleviate the issue.
- Some receive copies of the content on CDs which they store but have no plan for locally loading and serving the content. It is not an urgent enough issue to have impacted buying decisions at this point.
- They are content to have either perpetual access OR perpetual ownership specified in the license without having a plan for what to do if the downside of perpetual ownership without perpetual access already in place.
14. How in-depth of a license review are you doing for ebook package ordering and individual title ebook ordering? For example, do you try to negotiate interlibrary loan terms?
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