As online journal access becomes the norm, the expectation has been that e-books will follow suit. But the reality is patchy provision of e-books as publishers withhold core titles, especially textbooks, for fear of catastrophic print revenue losses.

Publishers are still experimenting with e-books, aggregators are coming under pressure from publishers and users on price, sales models and licensing structures, while information professionals and users are demanding more core titles and better prices.

Bill Gates cited electronic textbooks as the next big thing at the launch of Microsoft operating system Vista, but unless publishers are willing to take more risks with how they make their content available, e-textbooks may be left behind by e-learning content delivered in alternative ways such as virtual learning environment plug-ins.

Purchasing consortia in academia are attempting to drive the supply of e-books to counter restrictive models sometimes proposed by suppliers. The Southern Universities Purchasing Consortium (SUPC) made no secret of this when it struck a deal with ProQuest and Ebrary which allowed member libraries to cherrypick titles.

“We decided to formally tender for e-books so that we could adapt the business model to best suit our needs,” said Susan Wright, regional purchasing co-ordinator at SUPC, when the deal was struck in October 2005.

The deal worked out well, with high uptake from member libraries. David Ball, university librarian at Bournemouth University and a member of the SUPC, said: “People have gone for critical mass initially, to attract students to e-books with a large body of titles. When this becomes established, it is likely that libraries will start to want individual titles.

“One aspect of the deal with Ebrary was that we wanted to be able to build a bespoke subject collection, to specify high-volume titles that are not available through any other providers. This has been problematic. Publishers tend not to offer core teaching titles.

“Price is also going to be a continuing problem. There was a huge price difference, between 60 and 70%, depending on the model you went for when choosing a supplier.”

Bournemouth University has brought e-books as much as possible into the virtual learning environment as well as the reading list. Student usage has been high – markedly higher than usage by academics.

But this is not the case at all libraries. Monica Landoni, e-book group leader at Strathclyde University ’s Department of Computer and Information Sciences, carried out a project on ways to promote e-books. She found that accessibility and visibility were big issues.

No common understanding

“We discovered a lack of common understanding about what e-books were,” she explained, “what their advantages over paper books (if any) were, and, importantly, the cost and implications for ever shrinking academic library budgets.”

Landoni found that e-book uptake was not always as high as might be expected. “This is a very delicate subject, as the figures we saw last summer in a few academic libraries in Scotland were quite low in terms of usage but that was due to a number of reasons,” she said. “E-books were often hiding deep down in catalogues. Not many readers knew they were available. E-book readers were not particularly friendly or stable or usable. And, more importantly, the titles students wanted were not available.”

She added that what happened in practice nullified the perceived advantages of e-books: accessibility was limited to a certain number of users for a certain amount of time; personalisation was mostly unavailable or extremely limited; search ability very superficial and navigation very poor.

Joanna Ball, sub-librarian at Trinity College Library , Cambridge, is part of the team that introduced e-books to the library last year. An initial trial led to the introduction of a permanent e-books programme in October 2006. The library now has 219 e-books, 140 supplied by NetLibrary and 79 by Coutts. The library team has marketed the e-books actively and the e-book collection registered 12,000 hits during 2006.

Ball said the library could not provide all the e-books it would like to. “We do supply some textbooks, and would like to make this the main focus of our collection,” she said. “Our problems lie with the unwillingness of academic publishers to make available the key titles on our list.”

JISC has stepped in to try to remove the major obstacle of core title availability with a project to purchase from publishers a limited number of core titles unavailable as e-books and supply them to universities.

“We are asking publishers to be realistic in their pricing as we have limited money for this,” said Caren Milloy JISC e-books project manager.

JISC core title programme

The titles will be available from the beginning of September. A deep log analysis will track e-book usage and this information will also be given to the publishers. Publishers will submit print sales figures during this period to help measure the effect of making books available electronically.

Milloy said that although publishers would be encouraged to include e-textbooks, she was not optimistic that many would be. “Publishers are uneasy about the impact of putting the books online,” she said, “and this project allows them to find out what the impact is in a safe environment.”

Early e-book adopters are already tiring of the lack of progress in getting publishers to make their core titles available. At Bournemouth University, the library is targeting multiple copies and short loans where a lot of the work is in the library, and looking at what is available in electronic form wherever it is from. Ball said it was looking at tackling this chapter by chapter, if necessary through Copyright Licensing Agency agreements.

He believes teaching may change and move away from the standard reading list-driven approach, reducing demand for specific titles. “We are discussing spending the first half-term bringing up study skills including information literacy and then teaching through a problem-based approach. It is much more relevant to the real world.”

The world of the digital native is one where there is an expectation of electronic content and the associated benefits of searchability, links and multimedia, and universities will look to fulfil the expectations of their customers however they can.