Hello Parinita Samant and Other Professionals,
I have some suggestions for increasing usage of E-Books by users accessing
through Institutional IP range and/or when they are outside (residence,
hostels, outstation including abroad). Some of the steps we took at UoM,
increased usage of all E-resources geometrically (including E-books).
Basically it is the question of effective ERM (Selection, acquisition,
organisation, marketing, access and services). Few suggestions will
address your specific query also.
1. First of all selection of e-books should be users driven and not
vendor/publishers
driven (Pick and Choose Model rather than bundled offers).
2. If possible negotiate for supply of one copy of print versions of the
books licensed.
3. Prefer perpetual ownership purchase model. Even aggregators, marketing
and
giving access to e-books of many publishers facilitate perpetual access.
4. One can depend upon publishers' platform both for searching and
accessing full
texts. Second option is to get both full texts of books and metadata,
use
institutional server and software commercial or OSS to be on our own.
Usually
publishers won't give their concerned software to be uploaded on our
server.
5. IMPORTANT: We at UOM, apart from giving links to publishers' platforms,
have
collected MARC records of e-books purchased from different publishers
and
uploaded on our Library OPAC. This facilitates our users to search not
only both print and e-books simultaneously, but allows us to search
e-books of our interest
across different publishers at one go. The PDF links given take us
to the
contents page of the book we want from publishers site, from where one
can download the full texts. This will also avoid noise, as
publishers platforms throw more books not licensed than the ones
licensed by us. What ever hits we get
through our OPAC, we are sure of having full texts. You may like to
visit our
OPAC (http://libcatmysore-koha.informindia.co.in/). One can restrict
the search
to print or e-books or search both at one go. We have also accessioned
e-books
using different codes, say EBSP for Springer E-books. If we search by
EBSP in
the field Barcode under Advanced Search, the OPAC will list all
Springer books.
One can use this for searching books on a subject by a particular
publisher like
Wiley, T & F, CRC Press, etc.
6. The new developments like Federation Systems like FEDGATE of
Informatics (India) and Discovery Service of EBSCO also give good
solutions to
give access to both in-house and external contents/collections.
7. Access from outside: One can use OCLC's Ezproxy or similar solutions to
give
authenticated access to our genuine users when they are out of our IP
range
without violating publishers interest.
8. MARKETING: Whatever may be technological solution,
marketing/orientation/
awareness programs are a must to increase usage of any kind of
e-resources. We at UoM conducted E-Resources awareness programs
at each department and
library multiple times, The other modes include display on notice
boards, e-mail
communications to all users, regular orientation programs for students
during
beginning of semesters and more than anything else informal awareness
programs at our Digital Information Resource Centre, housing about 350
systems
9. During 2012, our usage of E-Resources of INFLIBNET/INFONET in terms of
downloads was fantastic with 36% share of usage by 8 universities in
Karnataka.
Some of the Universities like JNU, Delhi University too have achieved a lot
in terms of usage of e-resources. It is worth while, if they too share
their ideas and strategies used. Any comments. additions and suggestions
will help all professionals and there by our academic and scientific
community.
Regards.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Dr. I.R.N. Goudar
Ex. Visiting Professor and Library Adviser
Mysore University Library
University of Mysore
Manasagangotri, MYSORE - 570 006
Ex Scientist 'G' and Head, ICAST, NAL, Bangalore
Fulbright Scholar 1995-96 (Columbia Univ and Univ of Michigan)
E-mail: goudarishwar@gmail.com
On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 7:42 AM, Parinita Samant
Dear All,
I am facing a problem and need a solution for all you experienced folks.
What do I do to increase the usage of eBooks in the onsite locations for employees who are posted/ live abroad and have no access to the library. Has anyone faced this problem of decreased/ no usage - and how did you handle it? Please advise.
Thanks and Regards Parinita Samant Hexaware Technologies Ltd Mumbai
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