Collection Management

ISSN: 0146-2679 (Print) 1545-2549 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/wcol20

Ebooks Versus Print Books: Format Preferences in

an Academic Library

Weijing Yuan, Marlene Van Ballegooie & Jennifer L. Robertson

To cite this article: Weijing Yuan, Marlene Van Ballegooie & Jennifer L. Robertson (2018)
Ebooks Versus Print Books: Format Preferences in an Academic Library, Collection
Management, 43:1, 28-48, DOI: 10.1080/01462679.2017.1365264

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01462679.2017.1365264

Published online: 31 Oct 2017.

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COLLECTION MANAGEMENT
, VOL. , NO. , –
https://doi.org/./..

Ebooks Versus Print Books: Format Preferences in an

Academic Library
Weijing Yuan, Marlene Van Ballegooie , and Jennifer L. Robertson
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
When a scholarly monograph is made available in both print Academic libraries; book
and electronic formats, which format will users prefer? This study format; collection
analyzed monograph usage data from three university presses development; ebooks; library
book acquisition; usage
in the University of Toronto Libraries’ collections, comparing
analysis; user preferences
print and ebook usage patterns of identical titles. The goal was
to examine format preferences and determine whether there
are differences in usage across subject disciplines or publishers.
The study showed that although in many cases users preferred
one format over another, they used books in both formats. If a
subject was popular, usage tended to be high for both formats,
and if unpopular, low for both formats. The data also indicated
that there were some noticeable differences in ebook usage for
particular subjects, and the authors concluded that format does
matter and therefore it is desirable for libraries to provide both
formats if possible. The study also highlighted how critical meta-
data are in promoting the use of electronic resources. If there
were no ebook metadata within the library catalog, the ebook
usage was low. This analysis adds to a growing body of literature
in user preferences on book formats that can assist libraries in
making better-informed decisions in collection building.

Introduction
The emergence of scholarly ebooks and their integration into library collections
in recent years has led to many questions for libraries and publishers. Print books
and ebooks often provide the same content but differ in numerous ways, each
format offering distinct advantages and drawbacks. The two formats complement
one another in some aspects but at the same time compete to meet users’ needs.
The coexistence of the two formats and their interactions create a unique and
dynamic environment that librarians still do not fully understand. However, they
may have profound impacts on how monographs are used, collected, and published.
Incorporating ebooks into a library’s collection development strategy requires an
understanding of how they are used relative to their print counterparts. When a

CONTACT Weijing Yuan weijing.yuan@utoronto.ca University of Toronto,  St. George Street, Toronto, ON
MS A, Canada.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/wcol.
Published with license by Taylor & Francis. ©  Weijing Yuan, Marlene Van Ballegooie, and Jennifer L. Robertson
 COLLECTION MANAGEMENT 29

scholarly monograph is made available in both print and electronic formats, which
format will users prefer? Does format even matter? Are the same titles used in
ebook format as in print? Are ebooks used more as they are often more accessible?
Do usage patterns vary by subject or publisher? This study attempts to answer
these questions by analyzing usage data of books from three key university presses,
covering thousands of titles over several years of publication that are available
in the University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) collections. By analyzing format
preferences across publishers and subjects, the study aims to shed light on the
question of whether continued acquisition of the same content in multiple for-
mats is necessary and desirable, especially in an era of rapid technological change,
increased pressure on library acquisitions budgets, and diminishing physical storage
space.

Background
University of Toronto is a major public research institution with more than 67,000
full- and part-time students and more than 7,000 faculty members who teach
and perform research in the university’s 215 graduate programs, 60 professional
programs, and 700 undergraduate degree programs, covering hundreds of different
disciplines. UTL is the largest academic library in Canada and ranked third in
North America, with rich and diverse collections, including more than 12 million
print volumes in 341 languages, 1.8 million electronic resources, and large and
varied collections of materials in multiple formats. The library system is adminis-
tratively complex, with forty-four libraries on three campuses. The central library
system consists of seventeen libraries and includes various central services, such as
Collection Development and Acquisitions, Materials Processing, and Information
Technology Services. The Collection Development Department is responsible for
selecting materials in all formats for locations in the central library system and some
local campus libraries. The other twenty-seven libraries (campuses, colleges, and
departments) operate independently to serve their constituents, and many of these
libraries have acquisitions budgets independent of the central system. Historically,
in print book acquisitions, multiple copies of the same title were purchased in the
library system to meet local needs. However, in building digital collections, the
central library licenses most of the electronic resources for the entire university,
and after more than a decade of ebook collection building, there are now close to
1.8 million ebooks in the UTL system.
In recent years, UTL adopted an evidence based data-driven approach, based
on user demand, print use pattern, cost, and availability, to guide its decisions and
practices in ebook acquisitions. Ebook content purchasing decisions were prior-
itized after carefully analyzing the purchase patterns of print titles and their past
usage, such as percentage of titles purchased from a particular publisher; number
of copies purchased; and number of circulations, short-term loans, reserves, and
document deliveries among libraries in the university. Whenever possible, ebooks
30 W. YUAN ET AL.

were licensed as one-time purchases with perpetual access rights and unlimited
concurrent users without restrictive data rights management. Over the years,
the majority of ebooks were licensed through frontlist collections directly from
publishers, complemented by individual title selections as needs arose. UTL also
obtained rights to have ebooks locally loaded on the university’s servers to preserve
and allow access to the content parallel to publisher sites. Working directly with
publishers in purchasing ebook collections enabled UTL to acquire and provide
access to ebooks titles quickly, thereby creating efficiencies in an area with limited
staff resources available to manage ebooks. It was also a cost-effective way to help
reduce the number of print copies purchased across the entire library system.
In addition, by working directly with publishers it allowed the library to obtain
the best possible pricing, purchase books with the least data rights management
restrictions, and get dual access to titles on the vendor platform and loaded
locally.
UTL continues to receive print equivalents of titles in the humanities and social
sciences through the central library’s approval plans, as long as the books fit the
approval profiles. As a result, the UTL collection contains a large pool of titles having
print and electronic equivalents. UTL no longer regularly purchases print copies
of licensed frontlist ebooks in the disciplines of science, technology, and medicine,
unless requested by users.

Literature review
Despite constant changes in the ebook marketplace, scholarly monograph collec-
tions have grown tremendously in research libraries in North America. Depending
on local needs and budgetary pressures, libraries have either moved to ebook-only
acquisitions or operate in a hybrid mode where some books are acquired in both
print and electronic formats. Although there are numerous studies in the library lit-
erature assessing print and ebook use, comparisons of identical titles in both formats
are less common but have grown in recent years. Earlier studies tend to be limited
by small sample size and short duration and employ a wide variety of methods in
measuring usage. Slater’s comprehensive literature review (Slater 2010) provides
a summary of early studies on types of ebooks used and their comparisons to
print.
In the library literature, there are several notable studies that compare ebook and
print book usage. In 2004, Littman and Connaway published a study comparing the
use of 7,880 titles that were available in both print and ebook formats at the Duke
University Libraries over a sixteen-month period. The ebooks were licensed from
NetLibrary. The study compared whether ebooks or print books had circulated or
been accessed during the study period, rather than the frequency of circulation
and accesses used in other earlier studies, and found that ebooks received 11%
more use than comparable print titles (Littman and Connaway 2004). A similar
study of ebooks and print books in the physical sciences and technology at the
 COLLECTION MANAGEMENT 31

Texas A&M University Libraries showed consistent results where top ebooks in
various science disciplines were used many more times than their print equivalents
(Kimball, Ives, and Jackson 2010). In 2005, Christianson and Aucoin analyzed one
year of usage statistics for 2,852 books available in both print and ebook formats
at Louisiana State University and concluded that print book and ebook use were
different. Print was used more, but ebook use was more concentrated in fewer titles.
University presses fared better in print usage than in electronic usage. They also
found differences in format preference by subject and classification (Christianson
and Aucoin 2005). In another study of patron-driven acquisition (PDA) at the
University of Iowa Libraries, Fischer et al. compared use of 166 duplicate print titles
with equivalents purchased through PDA. Their circulation data indicated a strong
preference for online materials when they were available. The study also noted that
the circulation of the print copy drops dramatically once the electronic version
became available, especially for those books that had received two or more print cir-
culations prior to the start of the PDA program (Fischer et al. 2012). More recently,
Goodwin reported on a study at Coastal Carolina University that compared print
and ebook use for identical titles in the e-Duke Scholarly Collection from 2011 to
2013 to determine format preference. The study concluded that although ebooks
had a high number of titles used as a percentage of the collection, examination
of “substantive use,” defined as eleven or more page views in the study, in both
formats showed a slight preference for print, as a larger percentage of print titles
with use had substantive use compared with ebooks. The author also reported
noticeable differences in print and ebook use in broad subject areas (Goodwin
2014).
The University Press Content Consortium (UPCC) Books on Project MUSE
was launched in 2012, offering thousands of peer-reviewed digital books from
major university presses and scholarly publishers. At the 2014 Charleston Confer-
ence, three Association of Research Libraries libraries that had acquired Project
MUSE/UPCC ebook content, while simultaneously acquiring identical print con-
tent, also attempted to answer the long-standing questions related to print and ebook
preferences and whether they differ by disciplines and subject areas (Feather et al.
2014). This was followed by a more recent study presented at the 2016 Electronic
Resources & Libraries conference in which the Harvard University Library exam-
ined usage patterns of the Project MUSE/UPCC ebooks and their print equivalents
over a longer time period (Leach and Sullivan 2016). These recent studies were
based on a substantially larger number of titles and involved usage data from mul-
tiple institutions. After examining multiyear usage data, Leach and Sullivan (2016)
concluded that users wanted and used both formats and appeared to be using print
and ebooks differently, ebooks did not appear to be driving print book discovery
and use, and the effect of ebooks on print books were not as much as previously
reported.
One of the difficulties in analyzing print usage versus ebook usage is to determine
what measures to use and how to compare the two formats in a meaningful way. The
32 W. YUAN ET AL.

commonly available usage data of library collections are circulation statistics of print
books and vendor-provided COUNTER reports for ebooks, both quantifying usage
but not always at the same level and not in a way that is directly comparable. In a
study examining the differences in usage based on format at Oakland University,
Slater (2009) introduced the relative usage factor and applied it in a comparison of
print and ebook usage. More recently, in an attempt to address the problem of com-
paring formats, Knowlton (2016) proposed a two-step model for libraries to assess
books in various formats. In this method, a nominal assessment of use or nonuse is
performed first to eliminate the difficulty of comparing print circulation to ebook
usage statistics, followed by a comparison of actual usage to percentage of expected
use to show when users exhibit a stronger preference for one format within a dis-
cipline (more details of expected usage and relative usage are in the Results section
of this paper). Applying this method in assessing book usage at the University of
Memphis, Knowlton concluded that users’ preferences varied in some cases from
typical preferences according to disciplines. It is important for librarians assessing
book usage to recognize the inherent issue of how usage is measured and continue
to search for meaningful ways to make comparisons in order to fully understand
users’ behaviors and preferences.
In summary, although previous studies provided rich context and data from
various settings to help understand print and ebook usage, they often did not
produce definitive conclusions or confirmations of usage preferences, but rather led
to more questions or hypotheses. This study conducted at UTL attempts to add to
the existing body of work in this area by analyzing usage data of books from three
key university presses, covering thousands of titles over several years of publication.

Project scope and methodology

Data collection
Data from three university presses were included in the study. The first press con-
sidered was the Oxford University Press (OUP). In early 2010, UTL began licensing
Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) frontlist content. For the purpose of the study,
OSO ebooks with imprint years between 2010 and 2014 were examined. The sec-
ond university press considered was the Cambridge University Press (CUP). UTL
began purchasing Cambridge Books Online (CBO) frontlist titles in 2012. As such,
the titles covered in the study ranged from 2012 to 2014. The final press included in
the study was the Duke University Press (DUP). UTL purchased the e-Duke Book
Scholarly Collections plus the print add-on since 2008. With both formats available
within the library collection, this allowed for a longer period for comparison from
2008 to 2014. All ebooks from the three presses included in this study were licensed
for unlimited concurrent user access. Furthermore, for all three university presses,
backlist titles were excluded from the study due to the fact that print and electronic
versions were not available to users simultaneously.
 COLLECTION MANAGEMENT 33

To facilitate the collection of print circulation data, vendor title lists for each uni-
versity press were filtered to retain only the monographs that corresponded with
the imprint years considered for the study. All ten- and thirteen-digit ISBNs were
extracted from the lists and batch-searched against the integrated library system
(SirsiDynix Symphony) using a Z39.50 client. The resulting MARC record sets were
deduplicated and parsed to obtain the bibliographic data elements required for basic
identification and subject classification. To gather the data pertaining to the indi-
vidual copies of the print titles, custom queries were devised to retrieve Library
of Congress call numbers, number of physical copies, circulation counts, and the
date of last circulation. In cases where there were multiple copies of a particu-
lar title within the library system, the circulation data were aggregated to repre-
sent the total usage for the title. Data collection for the electronic versions of the
monographs was carried out by downloading the COUNTER BR2 reports for all
available years. For each university press, ebook usage data were merged into a
master spreadsheet for each vendor, allowing for the calculation of monthly and
yearly totals. To facilitate the comparative analysis, ISBNs were used as the match
point to combine the print and electronic usage data together into one master
list.
At the conclusion of the title-matching process, the complete data set consisted
of 6,555 unique pairs of print and online titles (Figure 1). For OUP, the matching
process yielded 3,624 matches between print and online titles. The OUP print usage
data were based on a total of 5,580 physical print copies held within the UTL system.

Figure . Title and copy counts.

34 W. YUAN ET AL.

CUP produced an additional 2,121 print books with online counterparts. In this
case, the number of physical print copies considered for analysis was 3,410. Finally,
for DUP 810 print and online equivalents were matched. In this instance, the DUP
print data usage were based on a total of 1,703 physical copies.

Limitations

Although the research has provided insight into the format preferences of users,
there were some unavoidable limitations to the study. As noted in previous compar-
isons of print and online ebook formats, the usage data available were not entirely
compatible for analysis. With the print data, evidence of usage was limited to the
total number of circulations as well as the last date the title was circulated. For patron
privacy reasons, UTL does not retain detailed charge histories; therefore, the level
of print usage through time was undeterminable. Thus, while a record of electronic
usage was available by month and year, comparable statistics for the print format
could not be obtained. In addition, because circulation statistics available only cap-
tured the number of instances that print titles were checked out of the library, it
did not account for in-house use, which may have represented additional use of the
materials (Rose-Wiles and Irwin 2016).
The evolving state of the COUNTER code of practice, as well as differences in
vendor implementations, also presented challenges for data analysis. The data col-
lection process revealed inconsistencies in the COUNTER reports through time.
For example, during the study, both DUP and OUP switched from COUNTER 3 to
COUNTER 4 and DUP underwent a platform migration from ebrary to HighWire,
possibly affecting how different platforms counted a “use.” For the present study,
it was established that all three presses on the HighWire platform counted chapters
and/or equivalent as a section, while DUP on the ebrary platform considered all uses
as a section. An additional challenge pertaining to the COUNTER BR2 reports was
that only used titles are included in the reports. Without a complete list of titles avail-
able on the platform, it was necessary to make the assumption that the electronic
version of the title was available for the same duration as the print version and if
the title was missing from the BR2 reports, this indicated zero usage. An additional
limitation to the study is that COUNTER data were not available for the full date
range of each press. For example, although UTL had print and online equivalents
for Oxford Scholarship Online titles since 2010, COUNTER data were not available
until March 2011. Similarly, although the library has provided access to the e-Duke
Scholarly Collection in print and online format since 2008, the COUNTER data
were not available until 2009.
For years the library community has called for standardized usage statistics for
electronic resources as one of the key data points for libraries to assess investment
and use. For example, after conducting an in-depth analysis of usage of ebook col-
lections from three vendors at the University of Idaho Library, Sprague and Hunter
concluded that “it was difficult to compare statistics between different vendors due
 COLLECTION MANAGEMENT 35

to different levels of information provided and different measurement tools” and

recommended that ebook vendors adopt consistent and comparable usage data
(Sprague and Hunter 2008, p. 156). Although some progress has been made in recent
years with the adoption of standards such as Project COUNTER, much still needs
to be done, as illustrated by the difficulty in gathering quality data for this study.
Another limitation of the study was that locally loaded ebook titles were unac-
counted for in the data analysis. UTL has arrangements with many publishers to load
their licensed electronic content on the library’s local platform for dual access and
preservation; therefore, for each university press considered, equivalent copies of the
ebooks were loaded on the library’s local servers, the Scholars Portal platform. How-
ever, since the platform was not COUNTER-compliant, comparable statistics for the
locally loaded content were unavailable, necessitating the exclusion of the locally
loaded versions from the data analysis. From the general usage patterns observed
for all books with dual platform access and the fact that there were no significant
differences in interface and access issues between the Scholars Portal book platform
and those provided by the three presses, there was no reason to think that the uses on
the local server were different. However, it would be reasonable to assume that the
use counts may be lower on the locally loaded content due to the fact that there was
an inherent time lag in providing access to the content after it was made available
on the vendor site.
A final limitation of the study pertained to data omissions within the e-resource
knowledge base. During the data analysis, it was revealed that, for an extended
period of time, a large number of OSO titles from 2013 and 2014 were missing from
the OSO frontlist package activated in the University of Toronto’s electronic resource
management system. Typically, for frontlist collections in which the library may not
have a confirmed list of titles that will be received throughout the year, access is
managed through an open-ended database package within the e-resource knowl-
edge base. By activating an open database, catalog records for new titles added to
the collection are automatically loaded into the library’s discovery systems as they
are released. As a result of the data omission within the knowledge base, a signifi-
cant number of frontlist titles were effectively suppressed during the time the ebooks
potentially would have received the highest usage.

Results
This section presents data and analysis for each press and for all three presses com-
bined, where possible. Due to the variations in collection size, subject focus, years of
coverage, and usage patterns for each press, aggregated data from the three presses
combined showed results from a larger data set and overall usage trends, while
results from individual presses revealed the uniqueness of each press and its use.

Title usage by format

To analyze title usage by format, the books in each collection were grouped into four
categories of use: print only, online only, used in both formats, and not used at all.
36 W. YUAN ET AL.

Figure . Title usage by format.

Figure 2 shows the proportion of titles from each press that fall into each category.
Overall, 78.6% of books were used at least once. Patrons at the University of Toronto
showed a slight preference for print, with 66.2% of print books and 57.0% of online
books used at least once. Examining the presses individually, more OUP print books
were used than online books, showing a stronger tendency to choose print. Usage
of CUP books was more balanced, with a slight preference for online books, and
DUP’s print books were chosen only slightly more often than online books. OUP
and CUP had similar percentages of unused books, while DUP’s collection had only
10.7% unused.

Number of titles by publication year

Figure 3 shows the total number of unique titles and the number of print and online
titles used in each publication year. The number of books used in either format
decreased progressively over the final three publication years of the study. This is
most likely because newer books have had less time to be discovered and used. For
OUP, the gap between used print and online books widened unexpectedly for the
2013 and 2014 publication years, and DUP showed a larger than expected decrease
in used online titles for 2013.

Distribution of print titles by most recent circulation year

Figure 4 shows the percentage distribution of print title circulations based on the
most recent year a title was circulated, excluding titles that never circulated during

Figure . Number of titles by publication year.

 COLLECTION MANAGEMENT 37

Figure . Distribution of print titles by most recent circulation year. OUP = Oxford University Press;
CUP = Cambridge University Press; DUP = Duke University Press.

the study period. If a title was circulated multiple times during this period, the data
show the most recent or last year the circulation occurred. For print books, 76.7%
last circulated in the final year of the study, while 91.2% of all titles’ most recent
circulations occurred in the final two years of the study. These statistics illustrate
that print collections were still circulating extensively and had not been replaced by
their online equivalents. The statistics also reveal that most of the print books that
were used at all continued to be used in subsequent years.

Total usage by publication year

Combining all three presses, there were 30,805 print circulations and 351,752 online
sections views or downloads during the study period. Figure 5 shows the total print
and online usage in each publication year overall and broken down by university
press. OUP accumulated the highest number of print circulations but also had the

Figure . Total usage by publication year. OUP = Oxford University Press; CUP = Cambridge Univer-
sity Press; DUP = Duke University Press.
38 W. YUAN ET AL.

Figure . Average usage by publication year. OUP = Oxford University Press; CUP = Cambridge Uni-
versity Press; DUP = Duke University Press.

largest collection of books. DUP reported the highest online usage despite its smaller
collection size, but much of this elevated usage can likely be attributed to the earlier
availability of the collection and the difference in how the ebrary platform counted
use. Usage for DUP was also substantially reduced for the 2013 and 2014 publication
years and, while newer books have had less time to generate usage, this very large
decrease was likely a side effect of the platform migration.

Average usage by publication year

Overall, average usage for the three presses declined from one publication year to
the next as newer books had increasingly shorter available time to generate usage.
As shown in Figure 6, for print books, OUP’s average circulation exceeded CUP’s
between the 2012 and 2014 publication years, but the averages remained fairly close.
DUP’s average print circulation in 2010 was almost double that of OUP and, while
the difference decreased in later publication years, DUP still maintained a higher
average print circulation throughout. DUP’s average online usage started out high
in 2008, increased even more in 2009, and then began to decrease between 2010 and
2012 while still remaining significantly higher than the other two presses. Following
the DUP platform change, average online usage decreased drastically in 2013 but
declined only slightly for books published in 2014. CUP’s average online usage in
2012 was almost three times higher than OUP’s, and the average online usage for
both DUP and CUP continued to outshine OUP for the remaining publication years.

Percentage of print and online usage by range

To provide a different view of the data, print and online usage were grouped into
predefined ranges as shown in Figure 7. For print books, the largest proportion of
usage was between two and five circulations at 27.4% of the collection, including
zero-use titles. If zero-use titles were excluded, the two-to-five circulation range
represented 41.4% of used books. In comparison, the largest proportion of online
usage was between one and ten uses, comprising 24.5% of the collection, including
 COLLECTION MANAGEMENT 39

Figure . Percentage of print and online usage by range. OUP = Oxford University Press; CUP = Cam-
bridge University Press; DUP = Duke University Press.

zero-use titles. If zero-use titles were excluded, 42.8% of used books fell into the
one-to-ten use range. These patterns were also evident at the individual press level.
In both formats, a very small proportion of usage was generated in the higher
ranges, with the exception of DUP having over 20% books in the highest three
ranges. It is notable that a substantial portion of content in both formats did not
get used during the study period. The fact that nearly 53% of OUP titles in the
online format fell into the zero-use category seemed significant and will be further
discussed in the Findings section.

Format preference by subject

After examining each university press collection as a whole, further analysis was
done by subject to identify any patterns between the presses and in the overall col-
lection that might indicate a format preference. Categorizing titles by Library of
Congress class produced twenty collection subsets, and Table 1 shows the distri-
bution of the three press collections and the combined collection across the twenty
subject areas by number of titles. The subjects varied considerably in size and each
press had a small number of subjects containing very few titles. For each subject
area, the total number of print and online books used at least once was calculated.
Table 1 also shows the results after calculating the percentage used at least once for
both print and online and dividing each subject’s more preferred format by its less
preferred format to calculate a ratio of usage. In cases where the number of titles
used in print and online were the same, the ratio of usage for that subject would
be 1 and a tie would exist. For example, an examination of OUP’s subject History
of the Americas (E-F) indicates that print was preferred and used 2.29 times more
frequently than online.
A comparison of the ratio of percentage of titles used in print and online by
subject revealed that while for some subjects the difference was minimal, for other
subjects one format was chosen much more frequently than the other. For eighteen
of the twenty subjects, OUP had more print than online books used and for the
remaining two subjects the same number of titles were used in both formats. For
CUP, online exceeded print in eleven subjects, six subjects had more print books
used, and three subjects were tied. DUP had more even results, with nine subjects
 40

Table . Number of titles by subject and press and ratio of percentage of titles used at least once.
Oxford University Press Cambridge University Press Duke University Press Combined
Classification L Code Title Count Print Ratio Online Ratio Title Count Print Ratio Online Ratio Title Count Print Ratio Online Ratio Title Count Print Ratio Online Ratio

Agriculture S  .  Tie Tie  Tie Tie  .

W. YUAN ET AL.

Auxiliary Sciences of C  .  .  Tie Tie  .

History
Bibliography. Library Z  .  .  Tie Tie  .
Science. Information
Resources (General)
Education L  .  .  Tie Tie  .
Fine Arts N  .  .  .  .
General Works A  Tie Tie  Tie Tie  Tie Tie  Tie Tie
Geography, Anthropology, G  .  .  .  .
Recreation
History of the Americas E-F  .  .  .  .
Language and Literature P  .  .  .  .
Law K  .  .  Tie Tie  .
Medicine R  .  .  .  .
Military Science U  .  .  Tie Tie  .
Music and Books on Music M  .  .  .  .
Naval Science V  Tie Tie  Tie Tie  N/A N/A  Tie Tie
Philosophy. Psychology. B , .  .  . , .
Religion
Political Science J  .  .  .  .
Science Q  .  .  .  .
Social Sciences H  .  .  .  .
Technology T  .  .  .  .
World History and History D  .  .  .  .
of Europe, Asia, Africa,
Australia, New Zealand,
Etc.
Total 3,624 1.45 2,121 1.16 810 1.04 6,555 1.16
 COLLECTION MANAGEMENT 41

Figure . Calculating relative usage.

with more print books used, three subjects with more online books used, and
eight subjects tied. Combining the data from all three presses resulted in fourteen
subjects with more print books used, four subjects with more online books used,
and two subjects tied. These statistics reveal that format preference across OUP
and CUP subject areas tended to be stronger than for DUP. While DUP’s format
usage remained very close to a one-to-one ratio across the different subjects, for
OUP print was used 1.45 times more than online and for CUP online was used 1.16
times more than print. Combining the three presses into one collection resulted in
print being used 1.16 times more than online.

Relative usage factors and expected use

To further explore format preference across the different subject areas, the propor-
tion of use generated by each subject was compared to the subject’s expected use.
First, a relative usage factor was calculated separately for each subject and format by
dividing the proportion of use by the proportion of the subject within the collection.
The proportion of use was determined by dividing the usage from each subject by the
total usage from the collection, and the proportion of the collection was calculated
by dividing the number of titles in each subject by the total size of the collection.
Next, each relative usage factor was compared to its expected use of 1 to determine
whether a format generated usage above or below the expected value (Figure 8). For
example, a subject representing 25% of the overall collection was expected to gener-
ate 25% of the collection’s total usage and result in a relative usage factor of 1. Where
usage was lower or higher than expected, the amount a relative usage factor diverged
from 1 indicated the percentage at which the subject was over- or underperforming.
When multiplied by 100, the relative usage factor is equivalent to the percentage of
expected use. For example, for a subject with a relative usage factor of 1.2, usage was
20% higher than expected, or 120% of its expected use, and for a subject with a rel-
ative usage factor of 0.7, usage was 30% lower than expected, or 70% of its expected
use.

Print versus online relative usage

After calculating the relative usage factors for each subject and format, the factors for
online usage were plotted against the factors for print usage by subject on a scatter-
plot. Figures 9a and 9b show the overall pattern of format preference by subject for
each press and the combined collection. The horizontal and vertical lines inserted
42 W. YUAN ET AL.

Figure a. Format preference by subject: print vs. online usage factors.

at 1 indicate the expected use for each format. The shaded area between the dotted
lines at 0.8 and 1.2 indicate relative usage factors within the range of expected use
(within 20% in either direction).
Comparing relative usage factors across all three presses and the combined collec-
tion revealed a positive relationship between print and online usage factors, and for
most subjects the usage of one format was tied to the usage of the other. If a subject
was popular, usage tended to be high for both formats and if unpopular, low for both
formats. In Figures 9a and 9b, subjects in the upper right quadrant illustrate higher
than expected use in both formats, while subjects falling in the lower left quadrant
indicate the opposite, lower than expected use in both formats. For example, OUP
Bibliography (Z) and CUP Education (L) both had much higher than expected use
in both formats, while for the combined collection Auxiliary Sciences of History
(C) and History of the Americas (E-F), both had higher than expected use in both
formats. At the low end, all three presses and the combined collection had several
subjects with much lower than expected use in both formats. However, few subjects
had relatively high or low usage in one format only. For example, CUP Medicine (R)
had higher than expected use for online and lower than expected use for print.

Figure b. Format preference by subject and press: print vs. online usage factors.
 COLLECTION MANAGEMENT 43

Figure a. Format preference by subject: difference between print and online usage factors.

Difference between print and online usage factors

To explore format preference in more detail, the gap between print and online rel-
ative usage factors was analyzed to help identify subjects where user preference for
one format over the other was strong. Figures 10a and 10b show the difference
between print and online relative usage factors overall and across all three presses
using a horizontal bar chart. Each bar represents a subject and the bar color indi-
cates the preferred format. The end points of each bar are equal to the subject’s rela-
tive usage factors, with the right edge equal to the higher factor and vice versa. The
length of each bar is equal to the gap between a subject’s print and online relative
usage factors, and the longer the bar the more preference was shown for one format
over the other.
Several subjects stood out either because of the substantial gap between print and
online relative usage factors or the large distance from the line defining expected
use. Some subjects seemed popular with the entire bar well to the right of the
line of expected use, while others had bars well to the left and were underused
in both formats. For the combined collection, twelve out of twenty subjects had

Figure b. Format preference by subject and press: difference between print and online usage
factors.
44 W. YUAN ET AL.

a print preference. CUP also had twelve subjects with a print preference, while
for OUP print exceeded online in fourteen of twenty subjects and DUP was split
evenly between the formats. Where there were moderate to large gaps in relative
format usage that might indicate a real preference, it was not the same subjects
across all three presses and a format preference exhibited by one press could be the
opposite for another press. While OUP and CUP had several subjects with large
gaps in format preference, DUP’s relative usage factors for print and online tended
to correspond more closely, with gaps not nearly as large, which was consistent with
DUP’s more even format usage.
At the individual press level, DUP had no subjects with a strong format preference
after excluding Auxiliary Sciences of History (C) for online and Military Science (U)
for print, both subjects having only a few titles in each category. OUP demonstrated
a strong print preference in Agriculture (S), Bibliography (Z), and Military Science
(U) and a strong online preference for Medicine (R) and Technology (T). CUP also
demonstrated a strong online preference in Medicine (R) and a strong print prefer-
ence in General Works (A).
When combined into one collection, the extent of format preference exhibited by
each subject at the individual press level changed considerably. For example, History
of the Americas (E-F) had only a small gap between online and print relative usage
factors across all three presses, with relative usage factors for both formats hovering
around or below 80% of expected use. However, as part of the combined collec-
tion, this subject exhibited a strong preference for online with both relative usage
factors above 120% of the expected use. This anomaly can be attributed to partic-
ular characteristics of the DUP collection. While DUP’s high usage in this subject
was offset by its large proportion of the collection size, in the combined collection
the percentage of total online usage generated by History of the Americas (E-F) was
considerably higher than its proportion of the overall collection. Therefore, it is pos-
sible that when combined into one larger data set, the format preferences exhibited
by the combined collection may be skewed by peculiarities of the individual press
collections.

Findings
The study shows that within the UTL context, both print and online formats were
used quite extensively. For all university presses considered, 79% of titles had usage
in one format or another and 45% were used in both formats. Among the individual
presses studied, collection usage was varied. However, DUP was a clear standout,
with 89% of the collection’s titles being used at least once. The circulation data con-
firm that print titles continued to be used several years after being released. In fact,
the majority of print titles circulated within the last two years of the study period.
These data indicated that when a text was made available electronically, it did not
immediately displace the print title on the shelf. Findings such as these demonstrate
that despite the widespread adoption of ebooks by libraries, faculty and students
 COLLECTION MANAGEMENT 45

continue to access scholarly monographs in the format that best suits their particu-
lar research, teaching, and learning needs.
In addition to uncovering basic usage patterns, the study also highlighted format
preferences by subject. Analyzing all three presses combined across the twenty sub-
ject areas considered, the preference was clearly for the print version of the book,
with fourteen subject areas indicating a print preference, four subject areas display-
ing an online preference, and two subjects showing an equal preference for print and
online formats. However, an analysis all of the presses combined versus the individ-
ual press results revealed that the size of each press had a considerable influence on
the overall preference for the print format. Of interest, among the individual presses,
OUP retained a strong preference for print, DUP presented a slight preference for
print, and CUP displayed a preference for the online format. Similarly, the number
of titles within each subject area varied considerably among the individual presses;
therefore, it is possible that use of a small number of titles could sway the overall
perception of user preferences. The tendency for the combined view of the presses
to mute the characteristics of the individual presses, as well as the characteristics
of each subject within those collections, illustrates the need to consider collection
usage both at the macro and micro level to fully understand how users are interact-
ing with print and online formats.
To gain a more complete view of user format preferences within the various sub-
ject categories, relative usage factors were calculated for each subject and format. An
analysis of relative usage sheds light on how print and online resources performed
relative to other subjects within the collection and also determines which format
tended to prevail in particular subjects. In the combined view of all three presses, it
was revealed that for most subjects there was a positive relationship between print
and online usage factors; subjects with high usage in print also had high online
usage, and subjects that were seldomly used in print were also used infrequently
online. Exploring the gap between print and online usage further helped identify
subjects where there was a strong user preference for one format over another. In the
combined view of the presses, twelve out of twenty subject areas indicated a prefer-
ence for the print format. This trend was largely mirrored by the individual presses,
with CUP having twelve subjects with a print preference, OUP having fourteen sub-
jects favoring print, and DUP tied with ten subjects illustrating a print preference. In
analyzing the subjects individually, very few subjects demonstrated a notable pref-
erence for either format. At the individual press level, OUP indicated a strong online
preference for the subjects Medicine and Technology and CUP indicated a strong
online preference for Medicine. Considering the nature of the disciplines and the
fact that ejournals have been readily adopted in the fields of science, technology,
and medicine, it is conceivable that faculty and students in these disciplines may be
more amenable to using ebooks over print resources.
It is important to acknowledge that in some cases the choice of one format over
another may have more to do with convenience than with the format of the book
itself. In other words, the convenience of accessing ebooks from the users’ desktop
rather than by visiting the library could be one of the reasons the electronic format
46 W. YUAN ET AL.

got used in some cases. This assumption is consistent with findings of other studies,
such as the survey findings of graduate students and faculty at Sam Houston State
University (Cassidy, Martinez, and Shen 2012), that users generally appreciated the
convenience of the ebook format.
The findings of the present study are consistent with other recent studies on user
format preferences. In the latest Ithaka faculty survey (Wolff, Rod, and Schonfeld
2016), qualitative data in user preferences of scholarly monographs were presented.
In examining how faculty members’ attitudes and behaviors have changed toward
electronic formats, it was revealed that for many users, the adoption of ebooks is not
at the same level as for ejournals. Although many surveyed faculty found ebooks
playing an important role in their research and teaching, print books were still used
quite extensively and were often preferred by many for specific activities. For exam-
ple, for reading a book cover to cover in depth, close to 80% of respondents felt that it
was much or somewhat easier to do in print format than digital, whereas for the task
of searching for a particular topic, close to 70% of respondents felt that it was easier
to do in digital format than in print. The Ithaka study also revealed that the accep-
tance of ebooks is largely discipline-specific; scholars in the humanities expressed a
preference for print books, while medical faculty members demonstrated an affinity
for digital formats.
Although the present study illustrated that there is a continued demand for both
print and electronic books, it also revealed shortcomings in the methods used to
illustrate user format preferences. Throughout the data collection and analysis pro-
cess one question continually surfaced: To what extent do usage statistics actually
measure user preferences? When analyzing print and electronic usage, the statistics
are not totally comparable. Print statistics focus on book circulations, which gener-
ally cover a long range of time. In contrast, electronic resource accesses tend to cover
short periods of time and focus on chapters or sections of books, not books in their
entirety. The intensity of use also cannot be measured through usage statistics. The
numbers provide no indication of how circulated items or online items are being
used by our patrons. Whether an item is used intensively or whether it is clicked on
once and never consulted again, one cannot gain any insight on this from the statis-
tics. Similarly, by focusing print usage on circulations, the statistics only capture use
that occurs outside of the library walls when a patron physically signs out the book;
it does not account at all for the in-house use of print items. E-resource accesses,
on the other hand, cover all uses regardless of where they come from. The unique-
ness of a user is also unaccounted for in the study. Due to privacy restrictions, the
study is unable to reveal whether it is many users accessing an electronic book or
one user repeatedly. Therefore, while the usage statistics may serve as an indication
of use, it is only through supplementary qualitative research that a full picture of
user preferences can be achieved.
The present study also demonstrated that it is not simply user preference that
determines usage; there are also technological factors at play. In the course of data
analysis, it was revealed that a substantial number of titles were used in a single for-
mat only. OUP had an abnormally high degree of usage in print, and electronic usage
 COLLECTION MANAGEMENT 47

in the last two years was significantly lower than the other presses. As mentioned
previously, one probable explanation for the low online usage of OSO content was
the fact that several 2013 and 2014 OSO titles were missing from the OSO frontlist
database package within the knowledge base for electronic resources. Because some
titles were excluded from the knowledge base, these ebooks were effectively sup-
pressed from the library catalog and consequently may have missed their period
of peak usage. This omission is particularly important for resources in science and
technology, as the content in these subject areas ages more quickly compared to
resources in the humanities and social sciences. In the case of the OSO collection,
it is probable that online usage would have increased had these titles been made
available in the knowledge base, and subsequently the library catalog, in a timely
manner.
Uncovering the data anomaly with the OSO ebook collection highlights the
importance of a well-functioning supply chain for e-resource metadata and illus-
trates how critical metadata are in promoting the use of electronic resources within
the library’s discovery systems. Although some may argue that discovery happens
outside of our library catalogs and discovery systems, the data in the present study
revealed the opposite; if there were no ebook metadata within the library catalog,
ebook usage was low. As more and more electronic content is acquired from ven-
dors, libraries will increasingly need to rely on systems and automated methods to
help manage and provide access to electronic resources. It is therefore imperative
that vendors ensure that the knowledge bases that form the backbone of electronic
resource management systems are kept up to date with high quality metadata to
enable user access to content.

Conclusion
Although it has been more than a decade since scholarly monographs became avail-
able in electronic format, the transition from print to electronic is still very much
in its early phase. The present study adds to a growing corpus of investigations into
the extent and nature of ebook use. The study showed that patrons used books in
both formats and in many cases preferred one format over another. The data also
indicated that there were some noticeable differences in ebook use for particular
subjects. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that format does matter and there-
fore it is desirable for libraries to provide both formats, if possible.
While it may be preferable to provide access to monographs in both print and
electronic format to satisfy user needs, this ideal scenario is unachievable for many
libraries. Increasingly, due to fiscal pressures, libraries have no choice but to limit to
one format. To help libraries sustain the ability to offer both formats when needed,
it is important for publishers to be innovative and experiment with more flexible
pricing models, such as by providing deep discounts for print copies when a library
has already ordered the title as an ebook. For this to succeed, publishers and the
intermediary book vendors that libraries rely on for their approval plans should be
flexible and mindful that all parties are part of an integrated collection management
48 W. YUAN ET AL.

strategy. Besides exploring more innovative acquisition and pricing models that will
allow libraries to continue to support user needs, in whichever format, vendors must
also continue work to develop ebook platforms that meet user expectations. Librar-
ians and publishers are partners in supporting research and learning on campuses
and need to find ways to work together to ensure that user needs are met in a way
that is sustainable for the future.

ORCID
Marlene Van Ballegooie http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5290-160X

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