11
To the HUL Digital Acquisitions and Collections Committee:
This report of the Electronic Books Task Force (EBTF) to the Digital Acquisitions and Collections Committee (DACC) identifies requirements for implementation of a program for electronic book acquisition at Harvard.
Our recommendations are based on close consultation of web-available resources for the evaluation of e-books issues, querying of expert Harvard staff, validation of our own e-book concerns in extensive vendor interviews, testing of vendor databases for ease of use and applicability to users’ needs, and surveying of peer institutions’ catalogs for treatment of e-books at both the collection and title levels.
The Task Force has addressed the acquisition and management of broad-based e-book offerings that either because of their size and the dollar commitment involved, or because of the breadth of disciplines represented in the collections, will require funding and administration across several or many Harvard library units. Individual Harvard libraries are even now acquiring e-book collections from a single funding base. DACC will want to consider whether any of the insights we are able to offer should be conveyed to the libraries to apply to their own acquisitions endeavors, particularly in respect of title-level representation of e-books in our shared catalog.
Introduction
Embodied in our findings are these underlying concerns:
First, the Task Force has in three vendor interviews encountered three marketing models for the provision of content. Each of these would cause library agents to adopt different strategies for acquisition, maintenance, and in some cases renewal of access to resources. The key outcome of our investigation is that there is no single e-books source or single business model that will meet the institution’s varied needs regardless of the complexities that present themselves.
Furthermore, there is no easy way to acquire electronic books and be done with it. No single entity or pre-existing group of entities in our organization commands all of the resources needed to acquire and to shepherd responsibly the growing variety of files of monographs in electronic format. With each opportunity for acquisition, DACC will find itself overseeing a flexible coalition of librarians that relies to some extent on on-going structures and previously acquired experience but which addresses issues appropriately to the occasion.
Next, since critical questions about the representation of e-books in the HOLLIS utility go to the larger issue of the acquisition and display of vendor-supplied bibliographic records in the catalog, we submit our recommendations with the hope of raising this point to higher levels of decision-making. We want to encourage community-wide review of the opportunities—and hazards—of integrating bibliographic entries from these sources into Harvard’s major finding tools.
Specifically, if our recommendation (Rec. 3, below) is accepted, that Harvard support title-by-title catalog access to e-books (as vendors’ business models permit), a diversity of opinion will immediately arise as to whether the bibliographic standard that mandates the use of a single record for all versions of an entity should apply. Successful record matching of vendor-supplied bib data to existing HOLLIS records is only the first hurdle. Detaching or disentangling holdings statements (net locs) for weeded or de-subscribed/leased titles or titles dropped by vendors becomes difficult. An alternative would be to countenance a departure from the standard, whatever the risk of diminished access, and to allow separate entries for e-versions of titles we own in other formats.
We have been privileged to consult with the Bib Standards Data Loads Advisory Subcommittee and to hear of their experience so far in attempting to integrate vendor-supplied records into HOLLIS. With that group’s permission, we include their Report in our Appendix, in order to keep their work at the forefront of ensuing discussion, since it rigorously addresses complexity. We are assured that the Data Loads Advisory Group will maintain an ongoing role as a resource for Harvard Library staff who accept responsibility for successful integration into HOLLIS of records for e-books.
The Report of the Advisory Group is also available at:
http://hul.harvard.edu/cmtes/haac/bsp-dataloads.htm
Once we came to understand the challenges of catalog representation of e-book holdings, we sought opinion from the ULC Public Services Committee on the service questions arisng from our investigation. In fact, the Committee’s interest ranged over the full spectrum of e-books issues, particularly their overall usefulness to patrons and the commitment of resources to their acquisition and maintenance in a time of constraint on budgets and of high demand on staff time. Many of the points raised in the Committee echo concerns we had identified previously, and they are reflected throughout this report.
Finally, from our own investigation and from our consultations with colleagues, we discern that the key role of the HUL Office for Information Systems in facilitating the importation of bibliographic records is not ours to assign, and that the prioritization of record downloading for e-books be viewed at other levels of decision-making in the context of that group’s not inconsiderable workload.
With those provisos, the Task Force offers its recommendations and outlines the model for e-books acquisition that we think meets the needs of the Harvard community.
The Electronic Books Task Force
Ivy Lee Anderson
Heather Cole, Convener
Gladys Dratch
Suzanne Kemple
Lynne Schmelz
In addition to the groups cited above, Paul Aloiso, Ellen Cohen, Jeff Kosokoff, and Kristin Stoklosa volunteered expert opinions in the preparation of this report.
8 May, 2003
Recommendations
Please refer to the Discussion that follows for an expanded view of the issues we have taken into account in making these recommendations to DACC.
Recommendation 1 – The Harvard Libraries should move quickly to acquire electronic books and should design a pilot project to that end.
The Task Force assembled by the Digital Acquisitions and Collections Committee strongly recommends the initiation of electronic book collection building at Harvard and promotes the rapid formulation of a pilot project to that end. Electronic books offer unprecedented forms of access to a growing body of the world’s accumulated knowledge, and it is central to the University Library’s mission to make them available to the community.
Any number of known user needs—and well-documented user behaviors—will be well served in the e-books environment:
• Course reserves regularly make use not only of full texts but also of book exerpts, and we have tested vendor databases to ascertain that there is a meaningful set of titles available for that purpose already. Results of a small test of course materials appear in the Appendix.
• In the normal course of scholarly activity, monographs are frequently consulted not in their entirety but through indexes, abstracts, and tables of contents for research results and synthetic thinking that are appropriate to the inquiry. The prevailing technology of e-books platforms provides cross-title searching for content that has the power to revolutionize the scholar’s approach to the traditional search of the literature.
• In Science and Technology especially, the researcher requires access to up-to-date manuals and data sources. E-books are the medium of choice for rapid access to the very latest editions of key reference works.
• Whoever—or wherever—the Harvard user is, 24-hour access is increasingly important.
Vagaries in the e-books market and questions of content provision and perceived utility to users notwithstanding, it is imperative that the University undertake a substantial trial of the electronic book, as many of our research library colleagues have done. We have determined that the only way to “trial” e-books is to acquire them, steward them responsibly, and initiate community awareness programs that guide students and scholars in their use.
Our (sometimes-wary) enthusiasm for electronic books has been borne out in the library community. In summer 2001, significant numbers of library staff committed time and talent to an e-books purchase that failed only with the vendor’s temporary withdrawal from the market.
As to impact on collection building: we understand that e-book content acquisition largely duplicates the past and the ongoing selection of materials by collections officers across the University Library. In its initial stages, e-books acquisition will have the effect of adding copies—in the form of net locs—to current University holdings. We are not able to assess the effect of e-book availability on future decisions to acquire print over electronic formats.
Recommendation 2 – Electronic Books acquisitions should be overseen at the University Library level.
University Library sponsorship of e-book acquisition is essential to facilitate broad access to purchasing opportunities, to ensure system integrity and standards-based display of electronic holdings in HOLLIS and to guarantee library users that good management practice will insure reliable ongoing access to e-books resources. We recommend that DACC undertake sponsorship of e-books acquisitions endeavors.
Recommendation 2.1 – DACC should form a standing subgroup for this purpose.
The EBTF recognizes the role of the Digital Acquisitions Program Librarian in reviewing and refining contract and licensing terms, among other key coordinating functions, and invokes that expertise in support of electronic books acquisition. Our aim, however, is to model an acquisitions program that makes only appropriate demands on that position and relies on the concerted effort of representatives of interested library units to initiate and sustain the purchase, management, and stewardship of electronic books. Therefore, we recommend that DACC designate a standing sub-group of its membership to bring interested parties together to effect e-books acquisition.
The role of the DACC subgroup, both in carrying out a pilot acquisition project and in ongoing sponsorship of e-books, is to announce e-books acquisition opportunities, as made known from a variety of sources, and to convene interest groups from candidate libraries that will work to deadline and will comprise the following capabilities (which for some units may all be represented in a few key individuals):
• Collections officers with the authority and the expertise to conduct vendor reviews, to evaluate offerings for content, and through consultation with fund administrators to commit resources to e-books purchases;
• Cataloging staff qualified, in consultation with the Data Loads Advisory Committee, to evaluate data specifications and data samples (in the instance where data sets are on offer) or otherwise to evaluate and distribute cataloging responsibilities;
• Experts in end-user issues who undertake to alert the community to resource acquisition and to create and distribute user instructions.
• Library administrators who are empowered to evaluate the use of resources over time and to renew or to terminate vendor commitments, as circumstances require.
Experience with e-books vendors will accumulate over time, and after all, how many disparate and distinct models of e-books availability can there be? It will be the responsibility of the DACC sub-group to preserve the institutional history of Harvard’s e-books acquisitions ventures and to advise new candidate libraries on lessons learned.
Recommendation 2.2 – Joint proposals to purchase e-books should have web-based support.
The EBTF recommends that DACC oversight of e-books acquisitions be supported by a web-based utility to collect and to match vendor and HUL participant data, to broadcast e-book updates to library staff, and to otherwise administer stewardship and maintenance functions for e-book purchases. There is a model available for this purpose in the Under Consideration feature of the HUL DigAcq site at:
http://hul.harvard.edu/digacq/
In our dispersed environment, a tool must be provided to unite the community around e-books issues. Features that might be included are:
• New vendor offers;
• Leadership and membership of e-books interest groups;
• Status of vendor reviews and target dates established by both standing and ad hoc review committees.
Recommendation 3 – For optimal accessibility, e-books should be represented at the title level in HOLLIS, in conformance with the single-record standard.
A key issue for the Task Force has been the representation of e-book holdings in the catalogs at Harvard. Although the complexities of data download, duplicate detection, and addition of net resource holdings statements to existing records are compounded in the e-books environment, the EBTF recommends that in every feasible instance, e-books acquisitions be represented at the title level in the HOLLIS utility and that access not be limited to the Harvard Libraries portal. Educating users not only to e-books availability per se but also to the varieties of collection-level access to—over time—a bewildering variety of vendor products is not really an option.
Furthermore, we recommend use of the single-record standard. We are, however, fully aware of concerns about adding net locs by program to existing HOLLIS records, particularly for leased titles whose net records must be “disentangled” in time.
Consulting the catalogs of peer institutions, we discover that their practice is to default to multiple records; they appear to be under the same constraints.
Only continuing consultations with the Office for Information Systems and the Bib Standards Committee’s Data Loads Advisory Subcommittee will determine Harvard’s best practice, but the EBTF will settle for free-standing net resource records, as our institutional peers have done, in the interest of the early acquisition of and provision of catalog access to e-books.
Two criteria that should apply to determination of practice are:
• That the model be one that supports both machine loaded and individually cataloged records, and
• That de-accessioning of online holdings be possible when a subscription is terminated and when individual titles are withdrawn from an e-books service.
We have been advised that collection-level records for e-book acquisitions will be required as well for billing and payment purposes.
Discussion of Issues
In formulating recommendations, the EBTF has identified the issues that the library community faces in bringing e-books into our research environment. In consultation with expert staff, we have attempted to anticipate the work steps and the interagency relationships that will support the timely and successful integration of electronic books into our collections.
1. Vendor Identification and Review
Although market sources for e-books are presently limited, we intuit that opportunities for acquisition will expand over time. In order to anticipate the growing availability of electronic books in many guises and models, we have devised a vendor evaluation tool that broadly comprehends what we need to know from e-book marketers, and we have tested the question set with three e-book suppliers: netLibrary, eBrary, and Books 24 X 7.