using the past to chart the future: evaluating top circulating print books by subject and publisher...

Using the Past to Chart the Future: Evaluating Top Circulating Print Books by Subject and

Publisher to Inform Future E-Book Purchases

Anne C. Elguindi Deputy Director, VIVAMichael Matos Business and Economics Librarian, American University

The Virtual Library of VirginiaThe consortium of the nonprofit academic libraries within the Commonwealth of Virginia

What is the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA)?

• 73 academic libraries (39 public, 33 private, Library of Virginia), including doctorals, four years, two years, and specialized institutions.

• Central funding provided by the Commonwealth of Virginia, additional cost-sharing by members.

• Grounded in the coordinated collection development of online resources and an extensive resource sharing program.

V

www.vivalib.org


Context for the Collection Analysis

• The Steering and Resources for User Committees had interest in buying e-books together based on a collection analysis.

• Of key interest was usage of print materials – which ones had patrons checked out consistently?

• The goal was to discover publishers and subject areas that would be beneficial across the consortium.


E-Books in VIVA

• E-books are relatively new for VIVA:– Safari Tech Online, started in 2008.– Springer and Elsevier purchases, started in 2012,

informed by an RFI process.– Demand Driven Acquisitions program, started in

2013, vendor EBL selected through an RFP process.


Key Issue #1: Being Inclusive

• Needed a way for libraries of all sizes to participate.

• Could not manage all books from all libraries.• Wanted to avoid title-level matching and keep

the results generalizable.• The result: Defined “top circulating” as

enough titles to equal 10% of a school’s FTE.


Key Issue #2: Standardizing Publishers

• Needed a way to efficiently clean the data so that the publishers could be matched up and grouped across the records/titles.

• The publisher field would be a difficult route.• The result: The ISBN was used to create a

standardized publisher field.


From the ISBN to the Publisher

• A portion of the ISBN is for the registrant element, which is used to assign a block of ISBNs to a particular publisher.

• 0-00 through 0-19 represent large publishers, because more numbers of the ISBN are left to distinguish individual books.

• This pattern continues through to 0-9500000 through 0-9999999, which represent much smaller publishers.


From the ISBN to the Publisher

• Using a listing of almost 116,000 publishers, the ISBN was mapped to an individual publishers.

0195161467


Report Criteria

• Circulating print books only.• Published in 1980 or more recently.• Last circulated 7/1/08 or more recently.• Copies of books are to be treated together.• Total circulations so that the total number of

records equals 10% of the institution’s FTE.


Data Sent to the Central Office

• OCLC #• ISBN• publication year• call number • publisher• total number of circulations • last date circulated


Number of Books by Institution787

1,918

805

3,545

1,965

468

2,875

College of William & Mary

James Madison University

J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College

Northern Virginia Community College

Old Dominion University

University of Richmond

Virginia Tech

Total Books Included: 12,363


Publishers by Number of Titles

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

1,233 Publishers Included in the Data Set


Top 25 Overall Publishers by Number of Titles

Academic

Press

Yale Unive

rsity

Press

Rizzoli

Universi

ty of C

hicago Pre

ss

Longman

Aspen Publis

hers

Harvard

Unive

rsity

Press

West

Pub. Co.

AddisonW

esley

Houghton Miffl

in

St. M

artin's

Press

Doubleday

Wadsw

orth Pub. C

o.

Greenwood Pre

ss

Sage Public

ations

Macm

illan

Greenhave

n Press

Norton

Cambridge U

niversi

ty Pre

ss

Harper &

Row

Oxford

Unive

rsity

Press

McG

rawHill

Random House

Prentice

HallW

iley

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

500

Publishers in the VIVA DDA Plan

Imprint of Elsevier; included in VIVA frontlist purchase


Proportion of Total Titles by Publisher Groupings

Series10

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

12,000

14,000

All 1,233 Publishers

Top 100 Publishers

Top 25 Publishers


Number of Titles by Initial Call Number Letter

A B C D

E F G H

J K L M

N P Q R

S T U V

ZN

T

H

P

Q


Top 10 Publishers in H: Social Sciences

Cambridge U

niversi

ty Pre

ss

Macm

illan

Random House

Wile

y

Greenwood Pre

ss

Harper &

Row

McG

rawHill

Prentice

Hall

Oxford

Unive

rsity

Press

Greenhave

n Press

Sage Public

ations0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140


Top 10 Publishers in QA: Mathematics

Cambridge U

niversi

ty Pre

ss

Houghton Miffl

in

Macm

illan

Academic

Press

Longman

Sprin

gerVerla

g

Wadsw

orth Pub. C

o.

AddisonW

esley

McG

rawHill

Prentice

HallW

iley

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

Publisher represented by VIVA current content purchase


Issues

• Does not account for e-book use, so this may not be a relevant analysis to do in this way for long.

• Course reserves affects this significantly.• Publisher hierarchies are not reflected, making

for a very long tail on the data.


Where do we go from here?

• We could read the results as evidence that the aggregated subscription packages would be the best choice for us.

• We can also see some leading publishers emerge in particular subjects. This could guide our publisher approach in purchasing e-books and seeking Demand Driven Acquisitions partnerships.


I’m happy to provide the code and the publisher list – just send me an

email at [email protected].


Special thanks to:

Dave Fjeld, VIVA Technical Support

And the VIVA Collection Analysis Task Force:Stephen Clark, CWMGene Damon, VCCSDavid Gibbs, GMULeslie O'Brien, VT

Genya O’Gara, JMUCassandra Taylor-Anderson, UR

Robert Tench, ODU

USING THE PAST TO CHART THE FUTURE: LOOKING AT PRINT

APPROVALS TO INFORM EBOOK PURCHASING

Michael Matos American University Library 11/8/2013

The Story Until Now..

Beginning in 2010 American University Library started exploring purchasing ebook frontlists directly from publishers. 2011, 2013, 2014 Springer 2011,2012 Oxford University Press and

Palgrave Developed a draft eBook policy in 2010

DRM MARC Records (Discoverability) Usability of platform

Why are we doing this?

Digital-centric trends with our users Increased emphasis of online learning Space repurposing within the library Advantages buying eBooks directly from

publishers Often better DRM than aggregators (ebrary,

EBL, etc.) Own rather than lease Comprehensive coverage Price per title often lower

Looking at the print approvals data

Springer 16

University of California Press 138

Yale 163

Harvard U 145

WW Norton 53

Oxford UP 459

Wiley 97

Palgrave Macmillan 488

Cambridge University Press 556

Cambridge Scholars 101

Elsevier 16

2012 Approvals title countWe Identified the publishers with the highest title count coming in on approval.

Compared against our knowledge base on the vendorterms, conditions and any anecdotal information.

Compare pricing

Look at other data sources (ILL, PDA, consortium borrowing)

Piloted with Springer, Oxford, Palgrave…

*Springer 178 titles in 2010

Our Knowledge Base Criteria

American University’s eBook Guidelines

DRM free or very open rights Perpetual access Open URL Linking MARC Records Acceptance of the platform Vendor has not frustrated technical

services

Comparing against other data sources(What our ILL statistics told us)

Circulations statistics Look at publisher and subject area Ranked by use

ILL statistics Inconclusive and mildly disturbing

Looked at the DDA Analyze by Publisher and Area

Case Example: Springer

Full-text Requests

First purchased ebook frontlists for 2011

Packages in Sciences and Business/Economics

Reasons we started with Springer.Publishes in areas relevant to our users Good pricing modelGreat DRM

Case Example: Springer

Denials by Year and Package

Challenges faced with Springer ebooks.Early on difficulty with their MARC recordsIncreased ILL requests Usage statistics not easily comparable to print circulation data.

Challenges

Increased costs overall Uncertainty regarding publishers’

commitment to current model Consortium access challenges

Questions?

using the past to chart the future: evaluating top circulating print books by subject and publisher...

Documents

nonprofit academic libraries

american university

viva ebooks

particular publisher

standardizing publishers

large publishers

smaller publishers

standardized publisher