Measuring the impact: Springer Book Archives at Melbourne

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1 Measuring the impact: Springer Book Archives at Melbourne Philip G Kent The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Abstract Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine usage trends during the first four years of the implementation of the Springer Book Archives (SBA) at the University of Melbourne. The article assesses the benefits of the SBA against perceptions at the time of purchase and seeks to evaluate the long term value of the purchase. Design/methodology/approach The methodology included a literature search to identify issues in the adoption of large backlists of ebooks, examination of detailed usage data supplied in COUNTER complaint spreadsheets and tables by Springer, validating findings with librarians and academics and positing next steps. Findings Usage of ebooks, like other electronic resources is difficult to predict. Resources expected to be used, may not be and vice versa. Access to large aggregations of electronic content creates new opportunities for teaching and research, additional economies and benefits as well as unexpected outcomes. Research limitations Detailed data on user profiles was not available and an evaluation of user perceptions was not possible at this time. Originality/value The literature review suggests that this is the only published study of institutional usage of the Springer book archives at this time. Keywords Electronic books, Ebooks, Backlists, Acquisition, Package deals, Academic libraries, University of Melbourne Library, Springer Paper type Case study Introduction The online revolution in electronic journals changed the lives of academics, students and librarians from the late 1990s onwards. In addition to the benefits of 24x7 access world-wide, the ability to access huge numbers of titles and to search concurrently across multiple publisher s platforms resulted in a step change in scholarship and accelerated the pace of change. The ebook revolution followed later, posing additional challenges in technology, rights management and business models. In 2013, the University of Melbourne, a large, multi-disciplinary research university founded in 1853 sought to accelerate the transition from print to ebook offerings to increase research collections as well as assist in freeing up library spaces to enhance the student experience. At the same time ever increasing journal prices, mergers and acquisitions, monopolistic publisher behaviours, financial challenges such as the Global Economic Crisis and expanding choices in content and formats resulted in concerns about the viability of the Big Deal approach to packaging ejournals. Commentators including Bergstrom et al (2014) evidence market concerns about the cost and benefits of the bundled approach to journal purchasing.

2 In 2013, the University of Melbourne Library became interested in the Springer Book Archives (SBA) that was launched at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting in Seattle. Membership of a Springer Advisory Board had provided early intelligence of this exciting product including the forensic search for lost titles and a strong commitment to quality in the digitisation process and metadata creation. Of primary importance was the ability to increase the fledgling ebook offering of the Library at that time with an additional 100,000 titles including historical texts dating back to The collection included seminal works from science legends such as Albert Einstein and Rudolph Diesel. The University already held 33,000 print titles from the collection. These could be enhanced by 24x7 online access and the print transferred to storage to yield further space in libraries. The 77,000 new titles offered an opportunity to easily fill gaps in collections. The Big Deal approach to journals resulted in some savings in work and interlibrary loans so the critical mass of additional high quality ebooks was viewed positively. While some academics in the humanities were reticent about the move to ebooks, the primary target for the archive was STEM researchers who had evidenced early adopter behaviours. As the University would become the first customer in Australia, attractive pricing was negotiated to enable the Library to assess the benefits of this aggregated content. The product was launched at the University on 5 April 2013 although content was loaded progressively later that year. The initial load of some 37,000 titles provided an opportunity to pilot the content in advance of the complete file. Subsequently 7 other customers in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) bought the complete SBA and further customers have bought select subject packages. Due to the investigative nature of the acquisition, uptake was monitored closely, resulting in preliminary observations contributed to Springer s White Paper (Toogood 2015). A presentation delivered at a Springer event during the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2015 extended that work using data from 2013 to mid The methodology for that study has been repeated using 4 years of usage data from while recognising that 2013 provided less than 6 months of access to an incomplete service. While the University acquired the complete file of English and German titles, usage of the latter file (30% of the offering) was limited, so analysis focussed on the English titles only. Literature review Detailed information about the innovative nature of the SBA product and its place in the library and publishing marketplace is found in news and trade publications around the time of the product launch. Gilson and Strauch (2011) record an early interview with Willems, van der Velde and Kemp from the SBA project team. They highlight an expectation that researchers and students will access classic science titles and that the product will respond to customer interest in digitised backfiles of legacy content. The online SBA corpus is anticipated to alleviate physical space management issues while ensuring the work of authors is preserved and accessible in perpetuity. Kemp (2013) documents the massive effort to identify, find, and contact authors and rights holders (in multiple languages) to educate them about the project, royalties, and rights. Brynko (2013) reports that only a small percentage of authors did not release their work for the project, contrasting with the enthusiasm of the majority of authors cited by Harris (2012) who were appreciative that their work will never be out of print again. Gilson and Strauch (2011) report that authors may decide whether to collect royalties or to donate them to charity. Springer leveraged prior experience in digitising huge journal backsets. Harris (2012) documents the challenges of tracking down lost copies for the collection and Brynko (2013) alerts us to the assistance of the National Library of Germany in this search. A number of authors characterise the

3 high technical standards and complex procedures for digitisation, Optical Character Recognition, metadata, MARC records and Digital Object Identifier creation. Extensive searching suggests that this is the first published case study of the impact of the SBA as a formed backfile. Bucknell (2010, 2012) shares his considerable and early experience in acquiring ebooks using different purchasing models at the University of Liverpool since Liverpool has acquired Springer ebooks on an annual basis extending back to the 2005 copyright year. Bucknell provides useful insights on COUNTER usage reports of these ebook collections. He reports that this big deal approach has worked well: all but one of the subject areas have been well used, the number of unused titles continues to diminish each year, older titles continue to attract significant usage, and the cost-per-use is relatively low. However Bucknell s thoughtful work does not extend back to the early content from the 1840s onwards found in the SBA. Studies on user preferences for electronic rather than printed books proliferate with as many findings as papers. Enis (2016) reports on the Ebook Usage in US Academic Libraries 2016 survey. Forty seven per cent of students prefer print format for scholarly monographs and only 19 % prefer ebooks. Conversely the Primary Research Group (2017) reports that more Australian, Canadian and UK/Irish faculty (70%) use library ebooks than US faculty (55.45%). The Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) estimates that library print and ebook collections will reach equilibrium by A Curtin University Library study by Wells and Sallenbach (2015) confirms that they are on track to significantly surpass the ALIA prediction. This trend is reinforced by Ritchie and Skoglund (2015) who claim 30% print versus 70 % ebook usage at the Barwon Health Library. A study on factors influencing usage of ebook collections at Laurentian University by Lamothe (2013) concluded that the size of the collection exhibited the strongest relationship to ebook usage, while doctoral students exhibited the strongest relationship with ebook usage. Kerby and Trei (2015) acknowledge the similarities between ebook and ejournal markets particularly in STEM disciplines. They conclude that purchasing packages is becoming a more attractive option for libraries while acknowledging that small libraries with modest budgets may not afford large packages. Conversely other studies such as Shapiro (2016) voice concerns about ebook packages because like the journal big deals it is an all-or-nothing proposition denying librarians any say in the choice of titles. Patron Driven acquisitions (PDAs) has been a popular development also favoured by many librarian for ebook purchasing. One criticism of the Big Deal approach is the purchase of unwanted or unused titles. Proctor (2013) suggests that librarians are thereby forced to purchase severely bloated ebook packages based on blind faith. Conversely Bucknell (2012) notes that the only space that an ebook occupies is a catalogue record thereby resulting in heavily discounted ebook prices. In his earlier article Bucknell (2010) also found that the number of unused titles continues to diminish each year and that older titles continue to attract significant usage. Cost per download is often used to determine value for money, particularly with ejournal packages. At Liverpool Bucknell (2012) observed that the usual practice of dividing the annual payment by that years usage differs from a single bundle purpose. In the case of SBA a large single purchase price is amortized over time. He says that for a single one-off purchase, the cost per download can only ever decline and will tend towards an asymptotic value.

4 With regard to usage, Bucknell (2010) suggests that access to ebooks on the same platform as ejournals does have an inflationary effect on the usage of the e-journals. Reporting on the growing collection of Springer ebooks at Liverpool, Bucknell (2010) suggests that different subject areas exhibit consistency in usage with between 40-60% of titles used in the collection. At Liverpool the only exception was Mathematics and Statistics where fewer than 30% of titles were used. He also observed variability in frequency of use across the months of the year. This is most likely associated with annual academic cycles. Findings - Usage From 2013 to 2016 nearly 1.2 million chapter downloads were logged by University of Melbourne SBA users. This accounts for one quarter of the usage by other ANZ customers. Limited usage was recorded in 2013 as the collection was being progressively implemented. During 2014 almost 500,000 downloads suggested that the university was tracking for a similar number of downloads per year. However overall usage has declined markedly in 2015 and The number of discrete titles registering downloads each year followed a similar pattern. Springer provided data that evidenced a decline in usage by other ANZ customers between 2015 and 2016 although this is not as marked as Melbourne s decline. Calendar Year University of Melbourne Other ANZ Universities , , ,634 1,253, ,102 1,582, ,296 1,186,942 Grand Total 1,192,097 4,281,415 Table 1 Comparison of Aggregate University of Melbourne SBA Usage Data vs Other Australian and New Zealand Universities One explanation may be that other ebook content continues to grow. Perhaps researchers and students are finding sufficient contemporary content from other sources. The most recent SBA content is As the gap between the SBA content and additional new content continues to grow, perhaps usage of SBA will decline. While SBA was purchased for its historic value, users may preference current content. One aspect that contributes to usage data is Springer s easy download facility for complete books. Usage data is determined by chapters downloaded. If one downloads the whole book, usage is recorded for the number of chapters in that book. If a user downloads a book that includes 17 chapters the usage data of 17 downloads will be logged, regardless of how many chapters were consulted. Another theory regarding the decline in usage is the potential impact of discovery services filtering searches. Springer and Ebsco, the vendor for the Ebsco Discovery Service used by the University of Melbourne were consulted. While no conclusive causes were determined, settings in the discovery service preferences the most current content. This supports the earlier thought that usage will decline over time due to the availability of competing newer content. Another possibility related to the easy download of the complete book is that once a book has been downloaded, perhaps to a personal device, that might be used into the future, without recording further downloads.

5 Although the SBA content dates back to the early Nineteenth century, the majority of usage is from titles published in the post World War 2 era of This period also saw the explosion of research and higher education. Copyright Year Range # Used Titles # Downloads Average # Downloads per Used Titles ,646 1, Total 34,786 1,192, Table 2 SBA Downloads at the University of Melbourne by Copyright Year One criticism of the Big Deal approach is the purchase of content that is not used. The decline in usage between 2014 and 2016 is mirrored by an increase in unused content. In that period, unused content rose from 62% to 84%. Analysis provided by Springer showed that overall usage of their book products was consistently around 30% from SBA files compared with 70% of usage of the front file or more current titles. This split should be tracked over a longer time period to determine trends. One useful metric is to track the total value of titles used. Springer provided data on the total list price of titles that registered downloads. This varied from million per year with a total value of 6.5 million over 4 years. It may be argued that this is an inflated measure of value. The move to online seeks to drive down the cost of individual transactions and to provide a new environment not constrained by old notions of cost. Nevertheless when seeking to determine overall value, the cost per download in the first 4 years is less than 60 Euro cents. As SBA was an outright purchase, all future downloads will continue to drive that figure lower. Findings - Disciplines Top usage of 5 SBA discipline clusters varies between years of access. In general it resembles the total list in descending order of use for the 4 year period as follows: ebook Package Grand Total Mathematics and Statistics 16,544 56,797 70,006 65, ,824 Biomedical and Life 204,395 Sciences 24,720 84,932 62,770 31,973 Medicine 12,333 86,055 29,843 16, ,591 Physics and Astronomy 10,943 68,271 26,975 15, ,047 Chemistry and Materials Science 14,349 45,153 27,442 12,340 99,284 Humanities, Social 9,710 37,262 26,287 19,008 92,267

6 Sciences and Law Engineering 5,397 32,918 27,819 13,079 79,213 Computer Science 8,669 24,847 21,818 17,655 72,989 Earth and Environmental Science 8,556 27,035 18,300 9,725 63,616 Business and Economics 4,070 15,468 29,272 8,402 57,212 Behavioral Science 1,759 11,135 19,548 8,087 40,529 Professional and Applied Computing 15 5,761 1, ,130 Table 3 SBA Usage Data at the University of Melbourne by Discipline The top 2 discipline clusters Mathematics & statistics and Biomedical & life sciences recorded similar levels of usage which then drops off for the third, fourth and fifth disciplines. Nevertheless this list closely resembles the research strengths of these disciplines at Melbourne. While Mathematics and Statistics is a smaller School within the University, high usage of specific titles in Mathematics and Statistics reinforces a view that this discipline underpins many other areas of academic endeavour. This theory was supported by senior academics in the school. Different usage patterns are discernable with ANZ customers showing stronger usage in computer science, humanities, social sciences and law. Findings Heavily used titles Closer examination of Top 10 heavily used titles throughout the 4 year period highlights close alignment with the Top 5 SBA disciplines. Title ebook Package Edition Year Total Usage ebook Data Mathematics and Statistics ,396 Surgery Medicine ,883 Probability Mathematics and Statistics ,299 Essential Statistics Mathematics and Statistics ,415 Electromagnetic Fields In Electrical Engineering Engineering ,860 Chemistry and Materials Science ,264 Synthetic Nitrogen Products The Molecular Biology Of Cyanobacteria Biomedical and Life Sciences ,221 Commercial Chicken Meat And Egg Production Biomedical and Life Sciences ,737 Arctic And Alpine Biodiversity: Patterns, Causes And Ecosystem Biomedical and Life Sciences ,609 Molecular Systematics Of Plants Biomedical and Life Sciences

7 Table 4 Top 10 Heavily Used SBA Titles at the University of Melbourne The most heavily used book titled Data (1985) is an outlier as the second most heavily used title achieved only one quarter of the downloads achieved by Data. In consultation with relevant academics it was determined that Data contains a large collection of exemplary datasets that every research student or researcher in applied statistics is likely to consult at least once. This book also includes 71 small chapters, each providing examples illustrating diverse statistical situations. If users downloaded the complete book, usage would be recorded 71 times leading to a significant inflation of the usage of this title. Other heavily used titles in this discipline are standard texts for undergraduates and graduate students. Springer s policy on allowing unlimited usage of texts facilitates access. The second highest use was for a medical reference work titled Surgery. This title together with others in the top usage category had at some stage been held in hard copy versions in high use collections. Easy online access reduces the need for such labour intensive processes. There was no overlap between heavily used titles at Melbourne compared with other ANZ customers. Findings Usage of pre-1950 imprints Sadly the ideal that students and academics would read early editions of Einstein, Diesel or Benz through SBA has not been realised! Less that 100 titles published prior to 1950 were downloaded including only 5 books published prior to While Springer is considered to be a science and technology publisher, the majority of early SBA imprints downloaded come from the Humanities, social sciences and law discipline cluster. The oldest book downloaded was: The Problem of Krakatao as Seen by a Botanist published in A Dutch grammar from 1891 was also relatively heavily consulted, highlighting the diverse publishing interests of continental publishers that were subsequently acquired by Springer. Two heavily used early Humanities titles from the pre-1950 imprints required further investigation. The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting by Raimond Marle was published as monographs in series between 1891 and They include chapters on various regions of Italy and document the art in churches and other institutions with scholarly commentary and many early black and white photographs. An art historian explained that the series is one of the few detailed early surveys in English that provides an authoritative account of a minor building or paintings of interest to researchers. Variant titles of the Original Drawings of Rembrandt from the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries were also heavily downloaded. They feature early reproductions of original drawings by Rembrandt of high quality. An art historian suggested that they were most likely downloaded by students undertaking a course involving a Rembrandt research project. Interestingly this series of titles was also heavily downloaded by other ANZ customers. These examples exemplify the finding that usage may not be easily predicted and that easy online access can facilitate use of esoteric titles by unexpected students and researchers. Conclusions Detailed analysis of volumes of usage, together with disciplines, titles and the age of titles produced expected and unexpected results.

8 Initial heavy usage in 2014 has dropped considerably but this may be explained by search engines that are optimised towards current content and the increasing volumes of electronic materials available through research library collections. Further investigations may explain outliers in usage and data collection but qualitative data is necessary to understand the application of the content. The heaviest usage in Mathematics and statistics and Biomedical & life sciences highlights the underpinning nature of the former discipline while the latter aligns closely with research strengths at the University. Heavily used titles can be explained if they are standard textbooks, significant monographs in series or reference works. Usage is an important indicator but outliers should be considered closely and methods of counting taken into consideration. The majority of usage is from post-ww2 imprints. Usage of pre-ww2 titles is limited and surprisingly come from the Humanities and social sciences. While the growing percentage of unused titles is a cause for concern, overall costs per downloads are low and will continue to be amortised over time. Opportunities for further work and analysis abound including more sophisticated analysis within full years of data and across the aggregated dataset exist. University systems preclude detailed tracking of individual users for important privacy considerations. However increasing opportunities to crossmatch different data sources through the growth of learning analytics may provide a deeper understanding of the role of specific resources in facilitating teaching, learning and research. Collaborative analysis and verification of the results with other customers may help explain variations and patterns of usage between other SBA customers. For example 18 Australian universities are implementing Jisc s Journal Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP). See: It offers a single point of access to journal and ebook usage data, giving libraries a simple opportunity to analyse usage trends and provide evidence of value for money. While the author is reluctant to cede ownership of data to publishers to potentially onsell, collaborative initiative such as JUSP provide a safe venue for sharing of data and findings with other customers. The University of Melbourne Library has not analysed closely the SBA content also held in print. While labour intensive and beyond current resources, closer examination of circulation data for print versions of the same titles will provide richer information. For example Bucknell s (2010) study confirmed that users want to immerse themselves in print but use online for a chapter or two. Opportunities to move print duplicated to store have not been explored in detail. Space savings may be achieved, but the preparatory processes are labour intensive. Bucknell s studies at the University of Liverpool advocated extensive online user surveys and focus groups. He also analysed month by month usage data that may help link usage to specific assessment and course requirements. This may be worth replicating at the University of Melbourne. Finally, the question of overall value for the SBA purchase is difficult to calculate. Bucknell (2010) observed that book budgets are traditionally dwarfed by journal budgets and that we need to fundamentally rethink their pricing models so that libraries book budgets can accommodate such offerings. He highlighted that libraries have finite often diminishing budgets and that users needs change from one year to the next in accordance with changing curricula and research interests. Patron driven purchasing models continue to offer more flexibility on a just in time basis and avoid large single outlays.

9 The purchase of SBA at the University of Melbourne was experimental in nature and sought to achieve a step change in access to full text historical monographs in science and technology disciplines. Low download costs suggest that the purchase was worthwhile. Times have changed and other purchasing options have emerged suggesting that a large single purchase like SBA would most likely not be pursued at this time.

10 References Australian Library and Information Association (2013) 50:50 by 2010, Available at: Accessed 29 January 2017) Bergstrom, T. C., Courant, P. N., McAfee, R. P., and Williams, M. a., (2014) Evaluating big deal journal bundles, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, Vol. 111 No. 26, pp Brynko, B. (2013), Springer Book Archives makes Its debut, Information Today, Vol. 30 No. 3, pp. 11. BuB: Forum Bibliothek und Information, (2013), Springer: Universities in Australia and New Zealand buy the Springer Book Archives, Vol. 65 No. 6, pp BuB: Forum Bibliothek und Information, (2014), Springer: Max-Planck Society Buys Complete Inventory of Book Archives, Vol. 66 No. 4, pp Bucknell, T. (2010), The Big Deal approach to acquiring e-books: a usage-based study, Serials, Vol. 23 No. 2, pp Bucknell, T. (2012), Buying by the bucketful: a comparative study of e-book acquisition strategies, Insights - the UKSG Journal, Vol:25 Iss:1 pp College & Research Libraries News (2016), Springer nature merges Major Reference works portfolios of Palgrave MacMillan, Springer, Vol. 77 No. 10, pp Enis, M. (2016), Academic ebook sales flat, Library Journal, Vol. 141 No. 17, pp Gilson, T. and Strauch, C. (2011), ATG interviews Springer, Against the Grain, Vol. 23 Iss. 6, pp Harris, S. (2012), Archive makes out-of-print books available, Research Information, No. 58, pp Information World Review (2013), Springer Book Archives set to reach 100,000 by end of year,, pp Kemp, J. (2013), Back Talk: digitizing Diesel (and other great minds), Library Journal, Vol. 138 No. 6, pp Kerby, E. E. and Trei, K. (2015), Minding the Gap: ebook package purchasing, Collection Building, Vol. 34 No. 4, pp Lamothe, A. R. (2013), Factors influencing the usage of the electronic book collection: size of the e- book collection, the student population, and the faculty population College & Research Libraries News, Vol. 74 No. 1, pp Library Journal (2011), Springer Science+Business Media announced in October that it will be digitizing its entire book archive, which includes about 65,000 books published since the 1840s, Vol. 136 No. 18, pp. 22. McCormack, H. (2011), Our ebook future: librarians and publishers in dialog, Library Journal, Vol. 136 No. 16, pp. 24.

11 Primary Research Group Inc (2017) International Survey of Research University Faculty; use of ebooks. Available from: Proctor, J. (2013), Avoiding ebook big deals : alternatives to ebook backlists, New Library World, Vol. 114 Iss 7/8 pp Ritchie, A. and Skoglund, H. (2015), Ebooks at Barwon Health Library: a case study, Australian Library Journal, Vol. 64 No. 3, pp Sabroski, S. (2011), CLOCKSS partnered with Springer Science-Business Media to preserve more than 32,000 ebooks in CLOCKSS s geographically and geopolitically distributed network of redundant archive nodes, Online, Vol. 35 No. 2, pp. 8. Swoger, B. (2013), Springer Book Archives, Library Journal, Vol. 138 No. 6, pp Tanabe, Y. (2015), Springer s scholarly books and Open Access, Journal of information Processing & Management / Joho Kanri, Vol. 57 No. 11, pp Toogood, M. [2015] The Springer Book Archives: reflections on closing the gap in research, White Paper. Available at: (Accessed 26 January 2017) Wells, D. and Sallenbach, A. (2015), Books and ebooks in an academic library, Australian Library Journal, Vol. 64 No. 3, pp Corresponding author Philip G Kent is University Librarian and Executive Director, Collections at the University of Melbourne. He is responsible for strategic leadership for the Library and over 30 cultural collections housed at one of Australia s leading research universities. He can be contacted at: pgkent@unimelb.edu.au The author wishes to acknowledge the Australian and international staff of Springer who provided data and support for the completion of this research and case study. University of Melbourne Library staff are thanked for their effort in implementing the first site for this product in the Australian market and sharing an interest in the outcomes.

12 Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne Author/s: KENT, P Title: Measuring the impact: Springer Book Archives at Melbourne Date: 2017 Citation: KENT, P, Measuring the impact: Springer Book Archives at Melbourne, Collection Building, 2017, 36 (4) Persistent Link: File Description: Accepted version