7 essential ingredients for the future of eBooks

In the previous eBooks blog post we looked back at some research conducted by Swets which focused on the main problems that librarians face when building an eBook collection. While these problems still exist, the industry seems to be slowly moving in the right direction towards the right solutions. Discovering the availability of an eBook, licensing terms and purchase models are all becoming clearer, particularly with the help of aggregators which pull vast amounts of essential information into one place to save the customer time and effort.

So, let’s look at some of the most desired developments in the eBooks industry, and how they can be reached.

1. Licensing visibility: It is fair to say that publishers will never produce a standard license encompassing all their titles, this would be neither practical nor provide the incentive that a competitive edge provides to the market. However, a platform where the product is easily obtainable as well as up-to-date licensing conditions which are available for quick comparison, has a great value! Until the market standardizes itself to some degree, an in depth comparison platform is a necessity to make informed choices. Good resources for information on common eBook business models and purchasing conditions for libraries can be found in this briefing document from the Berkman Center, and a web resource here from LISinfo.
    
2. Power to the User: Libraries often seek input from faculty or patrons to gauge the demand for certain book or eBook titles, but what if a license was purchased for one particular user, but that user only wanted a single chapter? Pick and choose and patron-driven acquisition already exists as a viable business model for many publishers, but taking this model one step further by  slicing and dicing the eBook unit is not yet commonplace. Although chapter purchasing is available for some content, it is not universal. Slicing and dicing could be combined in a more simple fashion to include other digital resources, such as journal articles, reports sections of MRWs and so on, which would offer a customized and true multimedia experience for the end user. More control of the desired materials would increase the value of consumed content. Your ROI just skyrocketed! Patron-driven acquisition of ebooks was noted in the June 2012 College & Research Libraries News as one of the top ten trends in academic libraries for 2012.
    
3. Semantic linking: Much like journal content, eBooks would benefit hugely from improved metadata. By adding control at deeper points of eBooks  user experience would be improved - such as at the chapter level where groups of similar content could then be extracted from otherwise discrete entities. Could Metadata integration into eBooks allow for completely customized content delivery to the end-user, be format-agnostic, and allow for integration in to the WWW and collaboration platforms such as Mendeley? Perhaps even course materials for students could be automatically suggested by their deep links to course structure and content. The possibilities grow quickly! Springer revamped their SpringerLink platform in 2010 to allow better semantic linking between electronic resources including eBooks, but there still so much more that can be done to make the experience more valuable to the user. The concept of exploiting linked data for eBooks is taken further by researchers at the Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs in France, in their paper, “Using Linked Data to Reduce Learning Latency for e-Book Readers”. It explores the applications of taking user-generated data to turn eBooks into a more social learning experience.
    
4. Taking control of your time: The level of admin required by a library when dealing with hundreds or thousands of separate eBook publishers is a real resourcing issue. If this could be managed for the library and dealt with centrally, with one account and one invoice, imagine the time that would be free up for other tasks like eBook selection management or intra-departmental eBook marketing to end users. Interestingly, a white paper commissioned by Springer marks out a set of cost items within a library comparing the relative cost/benefits comparing print and electronic book resources. On a scale of 1-7 (completely insignificant – extremely significant), “order processing” and “collections development” scored 4.0 and 4.3 respectively. This could indicate that although eBooks have clear benefits (storage, archiving, shelf maintenance etc), there are certain processes that exist for both, so value-added services can be added to these separately to assist the librarians. The report also lists “Reader instruction, publications, helpdesk” as a cost item that does not benefit massively from eBooks (versus print), so time saved elsewhere can be redirected at this important activity.
    
5. eBook mobility: Ebooks are typically consumed on many devices, some of which require their own format to allow the content to function properly. The range varies from simple webpage based HTML to PDF, ePUB  and other mobile formats. While some devices support several formats, there is still a huge gap of functionality across them. Often a user or library will have to buy separate devices to support different eBook formats, this further complicates the acquisition process. Standardizing programming or the introduction of a device which has the ability to support all book formats, use eInk, allow for interaction and more would be the beginning of a truly mobile library! Until then knowing what type of programming is behind your purchases is the key to successful ebook use. A good article from Joe Wikert at O’Reilly TOC outlines the fundamental problems in format and portability: “It's time for a unified ebook format and the end of DRM”.
    
6. Comparison: Like the well-loved online comparison sites listing purchasing options for the same product or service sold by different vendors, finding the same eBook title at the best price is obviously of great value to libraries working against set budgets. Instead of visiting several different websites in search of pricing and license information, this information is now being actively aggregated and updated in one place, providing a portal into an enormous array of publishers, with quick price and license comparison to make purchasing decisions quicker.
    
7. User-centric design: As the web and digital content have developed over the past few decades, we have seen a distinct shift from the closed view of publishers producing content in the form that suits them best, to them embracing the concept of user-centered design where content matches not only the information needs of the user, but also the usability that they have come to expect. In fact a JISC project in the UK made this very conclusion back in 2009, but it seems the market is still struggling to keep up (JISC national e-books observatory project). It could be argued that eBooks are still in their infancy, but the impetus to churn out front and backlist titles at the fastest rate possible has stifled the innovation in mainstream publishers to develop functionality. The hope with EPUB3, HTML5 and other new digital formats is that this may change, but more development dollars needs to be invested from the publisher side to make this happen; and perhaps more research of end-user needs. Take the electronic text book for example. Theoretically, this should be a successful endeavor like other eBooks, but a combination of end-user rejection on grounds of functionality and publishers protecting their print textbook revenue streams have slowed this important business area. There’s actually a really nice article and podcast from Ben Showers at JISC on the possibilities of EPUB3. A report called E-books in Academic Libraries based around the JISC study from the University of Strathclyde also pulls up user-centered design and general usability as a key flaw in the eBook product set: “Although the majority of users interviewed expressed a willingness to use e-books in the future, it was clear that many feel that currently the usability of e-books is too poor to offer a genuine alternative to printed resources for serious academic study.”

The opportunities are huge with eBooks. The aspects of the industry that have been drawn out above are not meant to represent an exhaustive list. Instead, they are meant to touch on some of the deeper issues, and potential solutions, of an industry that is still in its relative infancy, despite the time is has had to develop alongside the vast technological melting pot of the internet and IT tools.

In the meantime, it is a case of making the best use of available resources to discover, acquire and disseminate eBooks within the academic institution.

More on eBooks from SwetsBlog:
What are the barriers to building an eBook collection?