1. Concurrent 1A: The Coverless Book
Kim Collins, Emory’s E-Book Library Pilot Project
final report compiled and submitted by Betsey Patterson
http://web.library.emory.edu/services/collmgt/ElectronicBookLibraryPilotProject.html
October 2006 – April 2007
Emory adds 50,000 EBL (E-book
Library) digital titles to OPAC

2. Pilot a User-Driven Testing Model
 What would be involved in acquiring and
providing access to e-books?
 How would our users and staff respond to the
availability of e-books?
 Could e-books present an effective service and
space-saving alternative to print materials?
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3. EBL’s business model
 PDFs of several thousand scholarly books published by major
university presses and academic publishers
 Users can print, cut and paste, make notes, even temporarily download
EBL titles to their desktop or PDA for later study.
 Purchased EBL titles can be used for online course Reserves.
 E-books are owned by the library in perpetuity.
 Optical character recognition (OCR) also supports in-depth searching
of EBL content.
 EBL’s digital titles can be viewed online on campus or remotely
(24x7). Emory user accessed an EBL title through our EZ Proxy server, their NetID and
password was encrypted by the EBL system in order to ensure customer privacy
 EBL’s short term rental program we can provide immediate user
access to materials which previously we would have ordered through
interlibrary loan.
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4. Executive Summary
1. Use of EBL e-books proved popular
2. E-books were frequently consulted in lieu of print
editions
3. Undergraduates appeared to be the heaviest users
(Second was users of health and medicine materials).
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5. 1. Use of EBL e-books proved popular
 3624 short term loans (STLs) with an
average cost of $5.25 per title
 400 EBL digital editions purchased and
these were read or downloaded 767 times
during the test period.
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6. 2. E-books consulted in lieu of print editions
 Of the titles rented, fully 57% (1701) already
were held in print by the Emory libraries.
Immediacy of access compelling as well as ‘safety net”
 31% of the titles were for checked out
 11% were for titles in Storage.
 5% were for LOST, IN-PROCESS or ON-Hold
materials
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7. EBL rentals
On shelf, 778
Not ow ned, 1442
Checkedout, 467
Reserve, 35
Lost, 27 On hold, 19
Storage, 160
In Process, 25
On shelf Checkedout Reserve On hold Storage In Process Lost Not ow ned
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8. Safety net
 alternative to requesting print editions in
temporary storage, such as humanities and
chemistry titles in off-site storage during
construction projects
 Future Recommendation--Load a revised EBL
temp profile of records in LC classifications HN-
KZ and N-NX These call numbers are in temporary
storage from June 07-Jan 08
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9. Ordering of Results confirms E-Book preference
 One interesting – and totally unplanned – aspect of our
test was the way in which EBL records appeared to users.
 From October – December, EBL titles usually displayed
first in any results list in our OPAC (the last bib record in,
first bib record out filing convention).
 Reindexing in late December, resulted in most EBL
records filing at the end of any results list. short term loan
reports for the spring 2007 semester still showed that users sought out
the e-book rather than the same print book on the shelf.
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10. Who was using the Ebooks ?
 3. Undergraduates were the heaviest users of e-books,
with medical second –guess by titles loaned
 Use of e-books proved a boon to off-campus users.
EZProxy activity showed Emory users accessing e-books from China, Iran, &
Croatia.
 Because of the security encryption protocol used by EBL
to protect user privacy, we were unable to track EBL
usage by user category (e.g. undergrad, grad student, Arts
&Sciences faculty, medical faculty, etc.)
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11. What E-Books Are Being Used?
 Social Sciences - 36% of all STLs
 Humanities - 27% of all STLs
 Science - 18% of all STLs4
 Health & Medicine - 14% of all STLs
 Theology 4% of STLs
 Other (Law)1% of STLs
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12. LC Subjects of Rentals
Socal Sciences
Humanities
Science
Health and Medicine
Theology
Law & Other
Law & Other, 37
Theology, 154
Health and Medicine, 507
Socal Sciences, 1305
Science, 652
Humanities, 978
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13. How are E-Books Being Used?
 directly online or downloading Both access protocols are
controlled by digital time stamps; when the approved circulation period has expired the user
no longer can view the e-title until they rent it again or check it out (if the title has been
purchased by Emory.)
 During our trial the average time spent reading a
non-owned EBL title was 3 minutes
 The average time spent reading an e-book that had
been purchased by Emory was 27 minutes – Fall 12
min average vs. Spring 37 min. average
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14. Pilot Project Recommendations
 Continue EBL as well as explore other e-book
services.
 Retain full MARC bibliographic records for
purchased E-books and continue to load MARC
records for acquisitions as part of the existing
cataloging workflow.
 Remove all Temp records from EUCLID and
Load a revised EBL temp profile of records in LC
classifications HN-KZ and N-NX These call numbers
are in temporary storage from June 07-Jan 08
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15. Pilot Project Recommendations, cont.
 Establish funding for some un-moderated Short
Term Loans and set-up some moderated loan
options.
 explore licensing, technical and service
implications of expanding campus use of e-books.
 Begin a profile review with Yankee Book Peddler
to identify e-books as the preferred format for
specific subject areas
 Devlop a campus marketing campaign and
provide more training
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16. DLF session - Content Proliferations :
Libraries and Publishers, April 23rd, 2007
 Stephen Rhind-Tutt, President, Alexander
Street Press, talked about Less and Less
Distinction between Publishers and Libraries.
 Libraries are creating and publishing
 Publishers are taking on traditional library
functions – “Cataloging and preserving content ,
Identifying and ensuring quality content , Making the
content accessible at low or no cost to patrons , Assisting
scholars in finding and discovery”
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17. Conclusion- E-books require CHANGE
 Sell a print book to a library & you don’t need to
worry about cataloging, assess, user needs
(Reserve, ILL, etc.)
 Librarians may need to rethink established
procedures of selection, ordering, receiving
invoicing, cataloging, statistics, etc. & E-book
publishers/ distributors will need to partner with
us to develop better systems.
 Opportunity to give users what they want -
convenience and immediate access
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