Simplifying e-book acquisition at the University of Surrey

Kate Price, standing in for colleague Laura Smithson, described to us the re-engineering of the University of Surrey's e-book acquisitions process.

Background
U Surrey is quite innovation / research oriented so spends a lot of money on e-resources - mostly e-journals. They have about 90,000 e-books at the moment - another 100,000 if you count Early English Books Online.

• 650 purchased in the last year
• 2500 purchased individually (!! - surprising to me) - these usually come from the same funds as a printed book
  
• Packages are usually funded from the same funds as databases

Experiences of e-books
Kate asked us all to discuss our e-book experiences with our neighbours. I chatted with a sales rep from Gale who talked about the difficulties relating to multiple different e-book platforms, and the relevance of different levels of technology penetration. Kate recaptured our attention by asking us to shout out about things we had learned that had surprised us: nothing had! We are all struggling with the same issues.

She then asked us to discuss e-book ordering processes, before quizzing us about whether we found these satisfactory ... no-one did.

Changing processes
In the past, e-book acquisitions at Surrey were strangely paper-oriented and encompassed a number of delays. With budgets being squeezed, re-engineering was necessary to introduce efficiencies - using an aggregator to reduce the number of places to search. Crucially, the aggregator shares pricing upfront, and ordering / fulfilment via EDI means that data is on the LMS from the outset, saving much time and effort.

• Liaison librarians can log in to locate and mark the book up for ordering (essentially, adding titles to a shopping cart)
• the acquisitions staff will then log in to process the orders, either as batches or (when urgent) as standalone orders
• the data is then output as a spreadsheet (and the user can select which fields this should contain) for import into the LMS
• each item will appear as "not yet active - item is on order", so that users know access is imminent.
  

The LMS is a crucial part of the chain, through which orders are made and paid. "We print off the invoice as proof of purchase, because we don't trust e-books to stay there." The ordering, receipting, quality checking processes now take about 2 hours per week for 25 e-books.

[Surrey uses Coutts Oasis and Talis Prism but points out (true BBC style) that "other EDI order suppliers and LMS systems are available".]

Top tips and checklists
Kate (or perhaps Laura) has put together handouts with checklists; tips include:

• ask your e-book supplier to match your current stock against their available e-books when you start building your e-book collection, and get them to notify you when an e-book is available for a print book that you order - particularly good to do this for e.g. short-loan collections
  
• training, training, training - help sheets, screenshots, get the supplier in - ensure staff are familiar with the system
• establish workflows that suit your set up
• give everyone their own login (this can help to ensure e.g. they use the correct fund codes, as these can be configured only to appear for certain people)
• test, test, test
• integrate e-book ordering into the normal workflow - not something different or new
• establish processes e.g. quality checking, usage statistics, wishlists, customer support

"We'd like a lot more e-books to be published!"
Next steps for Surrey include

• embedding procedures for purchasing from non-EDI-enabled publishers
• introducing paperless processes for print book purchasing
• agreeing policy on purchasing e-versions
• patron-driven purchasing?

Future improvements Surrey would like to see include:

• Improved online selection and ordering
• Improved availability of e-books
• Easier login to individual titles
• Better mobile useability
• Reduced DRM
• Better understanding of learning needs e.g. multiple downloads, flipping pages, copying - "they need to do all of these things to learn effectively. Why publish an academic work if they can't use it do what they need to do?"