[LINK] iPads

Anthony Hornby anthony.w.hornby at gmail.com
Sat Jun 5 20:29:02 AEST 2010


Hi All,
Australian academic Libraries are already providing collections of
ebooks and have done so for some time now. In the market these are
available under many and varied licensing models and in many formats.
For this reason negotiating ebook licenses is more like providing
access to journals online rather than purchasing print books. No
single platform offers all the coverage you need, all contracts
require careful review to ensure clients can use them in acceptable
ways. All platforms require testing to make sure they are usable by
clients - some we have looked at have been truly appalling from a
usability perspective though the content was good. Others have been
really great. We have also rejected packages in the past for
unworkable DRM regimes - we are trying to maintain portability and
universal access in our choices of ebook platform where equivalent
coverage exists and not lock customers into particular devices. We
always clearly communicate reasons for dropping or not selecting
packages to publishers in the hope they might lift their game if they
get enough complaints. It would get a whole lot simpler if the
publishing industry could get its act together regarding ebook
standards - but I think it will be a few more years before that
happens (if ever) ;-)

At my library we are a little late into this area and will have 10,000
- 15,0000 titles in targeted discipline areas available to all
students late this year.
Note: stats on what Australian academic libraries spend on various
activities are publicly available here http://statistics.caul.edu.au/
- though ebook data is still pretty patchy.

At my institution we have had a policy of preferring electronic
formats in all library materials for some years now unless there are
good reasons for obtaining the print - and in some disciplines like
fine arts print is still king.
Like most academic library policy changes this has been driven by
client demand. All university clients now expect 24x7 access to all
scholarly resources and at my institution there is a large cohort of
distance and part-time students and online access works particularly
well for them. To give you an idea of the scale of the shift we have
around 600 active print journals and roughly 38,000 journals available
online. Books are the opposite with around 5% ebooks, though this will
grow rapidly in coming years. The proportions to some extent reflect
the relative maturities of the products, online journals have been
available longer and the platforms are getting better all the time and
have been available in all scholarly discipline areas for a long time,
ebooks have been mostly hype for the last ten years with a real
shortage of scholarly titles, but in the last few years have started
becoming a viable alternative (and this is now escalating rapidly).
Demand for journals online also started earlier, whereas client demand
for ebooks is relatively recent.


On lending devices - we did lend tablet PCs a few years ago and demand
wasn't that great, most students preferred to use their own devices. I
think most students would prefer the university subsidised the cost of
owning or leasing a device that would be "theirs" for the course of
their study rather than borrowing something from the library.

If the dominant device amongst clients becomes the iPad then we would
take that into account - we exist to serve their needs ;-)


Regards Anthony




On 5 June 2010 14:48, Tom Worthington <tom.worthington at tomw.net.au> wrote:
> Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>> Question from the floor, without notice
>>
>> What are e-books and the iPad going to do to public and other libraries?
>
> Good question, but perhaps a better one is:
>
> What are public and other libraries going to do with e-books and the iPad?
>
>
> --
> Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
> PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
> Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
> Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/user/3890
>
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