E - Books in Academic Libraries

Management of E-books in Academic Libraries

Bhupendra Bansod* & Ajay Kamble **

Abstract

The electronic resources are become very popular in academic institutions. The paper is deals with the E-books, its uses, elements, trends and managing it in academic libraries and the issues related with e-books are briefly mentioned here.

Introduction :

The rising cost of publications, coupled with practically frozen the budget of libraries. The technological advancements offer newer methods of information processing, retrieval and dissemination are the parameters to enforced stakeholders to look into the possible solution. The libraries are supported for teaching, learning, research, promoting educational activities to institution, and available a high quality information to its user.

Information technology, especially the internet has profoundly changed the ways of publishing. Newspaper, magazines and periodicals have for years been published online and all kinds of texts are now available in digitized form. Publishing is changing with the increasing importance of computer technology. Publications are appearing with mixed media and increasingly in a completely electronic format. Digital media and networks have created new products and marketplaces; electronic books (e-books) are the books of the network society.

The resources are found in various formats like E-books, E-journals, online databases, CD-ROMs, Reference sources etc. We found that the uses of e-journals are very popular in academic institutions. The other web resources like online databases are also using in various libraries, but the printed books are not replacing with e-books as compared with e-journals. There are several reasons like technological limitations, tendency of user etc. An attempt has been made here to highlights some issues of e-books and its uses in academic environment.

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* Librarian, PVDT College of Education, SNDT Women's University, Chuchgate, Mumbai 400 020.

** Librarian, Annasaheb Vartak College of Arts, KM Commerce & ESA Science College, Vasai Road(W), Dist. Thane.

Major trends in E-publications:

The major trends in the e-publication arena suggest that there has been rapid growth of e-journals in last decades; while it is predicted that somewhat similar trend may be witnessed for e-books in the next few years. This may be due to the increasing acceptance of electronic information resources coupled with increasing availability of full-text titles. Besides aspects like increasing acceptability of access instead of ownership; expanded access to integrated information and market target expanding to include individual subscribers have further promoted and supported the concept of acquiring and subscribing to e-publications.

Types of Electronic Resources:

The types of e-resources are classified as formal as well as informal

The Formal are -

• Indexing and abstracting databases
• Full-text (aggregated) databases
• E-journals - licensed or open access
• E-books - licensed or open access
• Reference databases (directories, dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.)
• Numeric and statistical databases
• Image collections
• Multimedia products - course material e.g. NPTeL

The Informal channels are -

• Blogs
• E-mail
• Discussion forums, News groups

Why we need Electronic resources:

E-resources are play a vital role in the field of Library and Information science to provide better services and easy access to library. The few considerable points are mention below.

Multi-access: the accessibility of information is made available 24 x 7 days. Multiple users can use the information at time with their terminals.

Speed: Electronic resources are quicker to browse or search, extract, integrate information into other material and to cross-search or reference between different publications.

Functionality: e-resource will allow the user to approach the publication by click of the mouse on search mode.

Content: e-resources can contain a vast amount of information, but more importantly the material can consist of mixed media i.e. images, video, audio and animation which could not be replicated in print.

Storage: The ability to store and retrieve large amounts of information

What is an E-books :

An Electronic books or e-books can be any type of e-content that is packaged as a discrete unit and can be used with e-book technology.

E-books are digital version of printed book, accompanied by extensive hyperlinking, apart form textual matters, graphs, charts, illustrations; tables etc. Due to hyperlink, user can jump form once concept to other and subsequently can absorb many bits of useful information instantly.

Landoni and Gibb defines e-book stating The results integrating classical book structure, or rather the familiar concept of a book, with features which can be provided within an electronic environment, is referred to as an electronic book, which is interpreted as an interactive decument which can be composed and read on a coputer.

The questions about digital books and the role of e-book readers aren't simply the responsiveness of new technologies to the needs of readers and authors; there is also a major agenda concerned with issues of Control, Economics, Greed and Fear.

Why E-books:

Electronic books and texts have been available for some time for selected public domain titles, only relatively recently have electronic texts been packaged and offered commercially as electronic books. The commercial production, sale, and distribution of e-books that has changed how libraries need to deal with e-books.

Electronic books offer creative possibilities for expanding access as well as changing learning behavior and academic research. Content can always be accessible, regardless of time or place, to be read on PCs or on portable book readers. Books need never go out of print, and new editions can be easily created. One can carry several titles at once on a portable reader and, over time, build a personal library. Features such as full text searching, changeable font size, mark-up, citation creation, and note taking will enhance usability. Print text can be integrated with multi-dimensional objects, sound, and film to create a whole new kind of monographic work.

The partnerships in the market, development of standards, software and hardware features, and business models are still regularly changing. Elements that we considered important to study regarding academic use of e-books are:

1. Content
2. Software and Hardware Standards and Protocols
3. Digital Rights Management
4. Access
5. Archiving
6. Privacy
7. The Market and Pricing
8. Enhancements and Ideal E-Book Features

1. Content

There are vendors such as netLibrary (http://www.netlibrary.com), Ebrary (www.ebrary.com), Questia (www.questia.com) and publisher initiatives that are aggressively building undergraduate e-book collections, the corpus of academic level e-books available is still small and not yet representative of many disciplines. Collection building, so far, is hampered by publishers' conservatism in providing rights to titles for e-book distribution and vendors' costs to reformat content from proprietary versions. At the academic level, subject areas with a broader customer base, such as computer science, business, and reference, are growing most rapidly. The current mindset is to replicate the print version of a book, but future development needs to recognize the potential scholarly significance of increased integration of unconventional media with text in e-books.

Academic researchers & Libraries needs to rely on authenticity and integrity of content. E-book content should match any print version and include all its elements: text, graphs, and illustrations. We anticipate that academics will increasingly incorporate information that can only be presented as non-print media (e.g., visualizations, interactive content, etc.). Content needs to be separated from access and manipulation features, and needs to be transferable, in a non-proprietary format, into a variety of software and hardware readers, both to offer readers a choice of additional features, and to make it possible for libraries to loan e-book content.

2. Software and Hardware Standards and Protocols

Software

Non-commercial electronic texts have been available on the Internet since the early years using file exchange, FTP, gopher and HTTP protocols. The uses of electronic texts are depending upon the capacity of Computers hardware and freely available web browsers.

Currently, there is no established standard for an interoperable e-book format for commercially produced e-books that addresses publishers' needs to support commercial end-user distribution and that also enables added value for the consumer. At this point, although publishers are creating books electronically, more often than not text is created in a proprietary form that requires reformatting or scanning of the print version for adaptation to an individual vendor's system. Of the current formats, large vendors are using HTML, XML or PDF as defaults.

The most promising standards are being developed by the Open E-book Forum (OEB), as the Open e-Book Publication Structure, which would ensure interoperability with both PC and portable reading devices. The structure will include metadata, identifiers, and a file structure for both software and hardware so that publishers can provide content without having to reformat it for each reading system. Although the current framework does have some limitations like unconventional multimedia integration with text, its elements of interoperability would make a significant step in the viability of e-books. Another element critical to libraries that is needed in the Structure is the element of non-proprietary usability of content, which would allow sharing or loaning information. (Ref. www.openebook.org )

Hardware :

A variety of devices are being developed to replicate some of the virtues of printed monographs, including portability and network-independence, so that e-books themselves will function on a variety of platforms. The two basic kinds of e-book readers on the market today are the full-sized reader and the palm-sized reader. Currently, all readers use proprietary file formats.

Given the range of users in an academic environment, it will be important that e-books are not hardware or software dependent. Libraries will undoubtedly be providing technical support for multiple online and portable reading devices. Now electronic books have been made available on multi-purpose workstations running web browser clients best suited to end-user delivery of brief texts that can easily be printed out.

3. Digital Rights Management

The networked information creates a globalized information marketplace. Critical elements in development of electronic publishing that its impact on libraries involves digital rights management systems (DRMS). DRMS are either hardware or software (or both) that enforce control over intellectual property, such as limit by user, time, fee, and/or extent of content. The similar controls have existed in the licensing of electronic journals, the length of book content and the concerted effort by publishers to establish such software for e-books make this issue more pressing. The gist is that standards should be allowing interoperability and ownership through digital right management.

Major DRMS developments that warrant continued monitoring are:

• ONIX, a book industry standard for communicating product information,
• including DRMS.
• Adobe Acrobat Web Buy, controlling access to PDF documents.
• XrML, a joint effort of Xerox and Microsoft
• Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL), a project of the World Wide Web Consortium

The degree of control e-book publishers choose to exercise over the access, sharing and loaning of intellectual property will make e-books either more or less compatible with the free flow of information needed in the scholarly setting. To support open research, libraries will need "ownership" or "first sale" rights that allow perpetual access and fair use, such as classroom use and the ability to loan the textual content (without value-added features) to other libraries. It will not be feasible to create a print copy of entire monographs for interlibrary loan, as is done for journal articles. Without lendability, e-books become supplementary to any print version required for archiving and interlibrary loan. When the market evolves to a point where a print version is not also available, libraries will need to have the capability of "loaning" and archiving e-books.

4. Access :

Besides interoperability and ownership through Digital Rights Management system other issues of access include user awareness and the ability to accommodate simultaneous users.

Libraries must be able to integrate titles with other formats in catalogs and integrated library systems, in standardized forms of bibliographic information and in metadata, such as MARC records and other appropriate metadata. Standardized identifiers and metadata will also be necessary to integrate e-books into normal workflows of integrated library systems for functions such as order, payment, cataloging and circulation. Vendor-supplied metadata should also be able to accept open URL queries.

Currently, vendors working with libraries use a one-copy-one-user model, following a traditional print monograph purchase model. The number of simultaneous users for e-book titles will become an issue, particularly in consortial arrangements. Depending on the type of information being purchased, a single user may not be using the entire book text, but only querying a portion of it. A single chapter in an edited work may be what is needed, rather than the entire volume. Ways to accommodate partial book use by simultaneous users need to be factored into licensing.

5. Archiving and Long Term Access

Two of the roles of academic libraries are building research level collections and acting as archives of research information. Currently, e-book vendor purchase models allow some flexibility, such as a premium price for perpetual access (and potential archiving) versus more modest pricing for annual access to a revolving group of titles. The ability to manipulate an e-book collection easily to eliminate older editions is attractive where currency matters. In other disciplines where long-term research is essential, assurance of perpetual access will be vital.

6. Privacy :

Some e-book vendors are creating individual user accounts to track which titles an individual has checked out, and to create "My Library" type features. These individual accounts on the vendor's web site may infringe on privacy, since it would be possible for vendors to report exactly what an individual had accessed in the vendor's system.

7. The Market and Pricing

Some e-book vendors are far claim a role for libraries as conduits to their customers, but it is not clear that libraries are truly considered a viable part of most marketing plans. At this point, there are only a handful of vendors, such as netLibrary etc. that offer e-books to libraries--particularly with academic content. Publishers have been conservative in moving into the e-book market, and direct publisher offerings are only recently beginning to appear. Library book vendors, such as Baker and Taylor, are beginning to make plans to offer e-books as part of library approval plans and profiles. The viability of e-book vendors is also still uncertain.

Vendors offer an array of business models for e-book selection, including:

• Print on demand
• Flat monthly subscription to a vendor's complete database
• Free browsing of a vendor's database with fees for printing and downloading
• Personalization (creation of one's own document by selecting segments/chapters from several sources)

Pricing options include:

• One-time purchase of a title with a premium for perpetual access
• Purchase of a title with annual access fee premium
• Annual subscription fees access with ownership
• Annual subscription fee access without ownership.

For libraries, pricing for e-books should include two separate and distinct elements:

• An initial one-time purchase price, less than the equivalent print version
• A separate minimal ongoing fee for access and archiving costs.

Pricing models should be developed that permit some level of simultaneous access.

8. Enhancements and Ideal Features:

E-books would be a viable product for academic use as an added functionality over print versions. This functionality may be as varied as inclusion of multi-media information, full text searching, mark-up, citation formatting, reference linking, convenience, portability, interoperability on a variety of devices, availability in advance of print, advantageous pricing, and the ability to share or loan information. Given the variety of user needs, non-proprietary interoperability of e-book content will be needed.

Role of E-books :

There are three roles of e-books in academic libraries. Each role has a unique mission, which are as

1. Introduce the current e-book technology to patrons. Libraries purchase handheld readers for circulating to users. Librarians select e-book versions and then it is downloaded into e-book reader by trained staff for usage. However attachment of e-book titles to specific e-book readers is the biggest problem
2. Provide e-book titles to patrons wanting e-books in a way similar libraries provide audio books and videos. Need arises for integrating e-book titles into libraries traditional work and organization. The capability of loading any library e-book title into users' own hardware.
3. Uses the unique features of e-books to improve library services by changing e-book technology and library organization.

Buying E-books :

Buying e-books is a relatively simple procedure. E-books are bought online usually through an e-book shop although some authors and publishers are experimenting with selling direct to their readers. Search the catalogue and select the book what is needed, add it to e-shopping basket and purchase it using a credit card. Instead of waiting a few days for the book to be delivered, the e-book is available within seconds as a direct download. Books may be downloaded to the hard-drive of a PC (which acts as a bookshelf for the e-book) or kept in a virtual bookshelf. Virtual bookshelves are maintained by e-book vendors for their customers and are accessed by passwords. Users simply log into their account when they wish to download a purchased book to their e-book reader. Virtual bookshelves mean that if a user's PC is stolen they do not lose their whole library of e-books too.

Standards for e-books :

Standards are still in development and currently different e-book software packages use different standards. For e.g. e-book developed for a palm based OS system will use different technical standards than e-books developed for use with Microsoft Reader. This is an issue, which the e-book industry is currently grappling with.

The Electronic Book exchange (EBX) working group is an organization of companies, organizations and individuals developing a standard for protecting copyright in e-books and for distributing e-book recently joined both the Open eBook (OeB) Forum and EBX working group. Terry provides a good overview of the development of standards related to e-books.

Advantages :

Some of the advantages of e-books are as follows :

• Immediate worldwide distribution
• Easy to sell and available for all
• Portable - many different texts on one small device
• Nothing goes out of print
• Instantly available / immediate download
• Font size can be changed
• Multimedia books are available
• Normally cheaper than print books.

Disadvantages :

The disadvantages of e-books are as follows :

• Requires equipment to be read
• Limitation in storing the e-books on a reader
• Authenticity of the content
• Poor quality output and high prices
• Readability of the reading device
• Low market penetration
• Different Standards currently in use
• Interlibrary load not possible

Conclusion :

E-book technology has a long way to go before it can equal the readability and richness of traditional books. E-books will have enormous impact over society. There is still considerable analysis and evaluation need to be done to fit e-books into future academic library needs and goads. E-books would be most successful in an academic environment. E-books will be fairly widespread in five to ten years. Libraries are playing a vital role in distribution and rights management systems for print materials, but the role of libraries in emerging e-distribution and DRM systems remains unknown, in terms of both size and nature. The challenge for the librarians is how to deal with coming age of nano-texts - small chunks of texts, smaller than chapters and articles. Librarians should take them as a challenge and apply professional expertise for the e-revolution.

Reference:

1. California Digital Library. Joint Steering Committee for Shared Collections. Ebook Task Force. Report. March 15, 2001. Available at http://www.cdlib.org/about/publications/

2. Open e-book Forum TM. Open e-book Publication Structure 1.0.1. Available at http://www.openebook.org/downloads/OEBPS/2001-06-30_OEBPS1.0.1/hoeb101.htm

3. Usha Mujoo-Munshi, Electronic Books : Acquisition and Subscription Models, published at Proceeding of Symposium on Consortia Approach to Resource Sharing : Issues and Policies, organized by DRTC, ISI, Bangalore, 2004.

4. M. Natarajan, Electronic Book its management and use in an academic environment published at proceeding of the national conference on Information management in e-libraries on 26-27, Feb. 2002, Allied publishers ltd, new Delhi, 2002.

5. Venkadesan et al. Strategiv planning and policy for collection development of e-resources. International CALIBER-2004, New Delhi, 11-13 February, 2004 )