Abstract
E-books are weird beings. Though at a first glance their similarity to the codex book makes them look like natural inhabitants of the library OPAC, the similarity to the codex is deceiving. E-books are a different kind of being, sometimes equally different from the codex as from the electronic journal articles that have been part of the academic mainstream since the mid 1990s. E-books might require new strategies and new ways of thinking. Since usage is increasing fast, it is important to share and discuss experiences regarding e-books. This article provides a description of the handling of e-books and e-content in general as regards the Swedish BIBSAM consortia and LIBRIS national union catalogue.
Highlights
Since the early 1970s, Swedish academics have used the LIBRIS national union catalogue as a backbone in their cataloguing infrastructure
The numbers for 2010 are not yet published, but the library statistics published by the Swedish Art Council report that 5,598,777 e-books were downloaded from universities or university colleges in 2009.1 Though this is significantly lower than the total number of downloaded journal articles (18,503,342), these numbers are very impressive when compared to the cost for purchasing e-books
The BIBSAM consortium is working on getting clauses that are compliant to KBART recommendations into all agreements with publishers
Summary
Since the early 1970s, Swedish academics have used the LIBRIS national union catalogue as a backbone in their cataloguing infrastructure. Since the national statistics treat e-purchase as one lump sum, there is no number available for the total cost of e-book acquisitions in Swedish academic libraries. The main difficulties have come from an infrastructural difference between e-books and traditional library resources.
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