This annual report has just been updated and published. You can find the a book review of it in PDF format here.
One of the most interesting findings of the report is that librarians with the biggest budgets (of $4m or more) increased their expenditure on e-books much more in 2006–7 (when the average increase was 35%) than in 2007–8 (when the average increase was 14.2%). Even more markedly, librarians with budgets of between $1.5m and $4m increased their expenditure on e-books by an average of 53.3% between 2006 and 2007, but by an average of just 7.43% between 2007 and 2008. It is interesting to speculate on the reasons for this: a major factor is almost certainly that libraries are approaching saturation point of all the desirable e-book material that is commercially available to them. If publishers want e-book sales to continue to increase, therefore, they may have to bite the bullet on refusing to digitize textbooks because they are afraid of losing print sales – and at the same time find a mutually palatable e-textbook sales model.
Thanks to ResourceShelf for the link.
Traditionally in the U.S., libraries don’t generally purchase textbooks. Why buy two copies of something, when several hundred will need to use it? University libraries sometimes also have an agreement with the campus bookstore. Is there some thought that this might change? I’ve not heard any news on this front.
Hi Paul, the Ingenta review link has expired – can you post a citation to where the review can be found?