Abstract
The Open University’s Library Service has witnessed a huge shift away from print in order to at first drive and then meet the growing demand for e-books. Processes and workflows have grown responsively and almost organically as Library staff strive to manage this change operationally on what has felt like an internal and external landscape of shifting sands. This article presents a case study that discusses issues faced by Open University Library Services around the acquisition of e-books and some of the ways that these issues have been, and continue to be addressed. It concludes that the best solution to meet future demand for e-books from students, tutors and researchers lies in the collective expression of requirements and collaborative provision of solutions across all relevant sectors of the information supply chain.
Highlights
The Open University’s Library Service has witnessed a huge shift away from print in order to at first drive and meet the growing demand for e-books
This article presents a case study that discusses issues faced by Open University Library Services around the acquisition of e-books and some of the ways that these issues have been, and continue to be addressed
With the introduction of a policy to buy e-books rather than print, The Open University Library Service’s Content and Licensing Team has worked hard to ensure that processes change and grow to enable us to deal with the new complexities of e-book acquisition and use
Summary
The Open University is the UK’s largest distance learning institution with over 200,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students, nearly 33,000 (16.5%) of whom have a disability. Our favoured supplier of 12 months ago is not the same as our current favoured supplier, so the logical conclusion is that if we had had a single supplier policy, we would be providing our users with a sub-standard service, both in the purchase and use of e-book content Publishers have developed their own platforms and so have e-book aggregators. What’s more, we have become increasingly aware of the amount of ‘experimentation’ that publishers are doing with business models which causes content to appear and disappear under different licence terms and on different platforms This has the potential to damage our ability to meet the needs teams and students. The University buys e-textbooks but users want seamless authenticated access between them and the Library’s content as well as content that students purchase themselves
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