Re: [LIS-Forum] Increasing the usage of e-books - Suggestions - UoM Experience
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 <parinitas@hexaware.com>wrote:
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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Ishwar Goudar