4.4 Usage statistics
4.4.4 Vendor statistics for e-books
The e-book statistics presented here are from two distinct collections, namely the netLibrary and the African Writers Series (AWS). As previously stated the statistics from neither source is COUNTER compliant. netLibrary statistics provide a record of access to titles and to subjects. Subject categorisation is according to BISAC (Book Industry Standards Advisory Committee) and they appear in the bar chart
represented in Figure 4.10. Excluded from the chart are those categories where accesses were one or zero. The excluded categories are:
6 The format of Cambridge University Press articles is predominantly PDF and as very little HTML content is available, this is not surprising.
History, United States, Home Economics, Mathematics and Statistics, Networking and Telecommunications, Other, Physics, Sociology and Anthropology, Sports and Recreation.
The subject categories in Figure 4.10 are arranged in the order of those most used to those least accessed. The engineering content is represented in the category of Technology Engineering and Manufacturing. The usage in this category records over 200 accesses during 2008 but less than 50 accesses during 2009. This is a dramatic drop in use. Subject categories for the HDSS include Social Sciences (General), Literature, Political Science, Language and Linguistics, Religion, Psychology, Arts, Library Science, Philosophy, and History. Access to titles in these subjects are all well below 50 except for the General Social Sciences where e-books in this category were accessed over 50 times in 2008. In 2009 there is less usage in all the HDSS categories except for Psychology which appears to maintain the same usage.
Figure 4.10 netLibrary e-book access by subject
netLibrary su bjects
0 50 100 150 200 250
Travel and Geography History: World and General Philosophy Arts Earth Sciences Library Science and Publishing Chemistry Law Psychology Religion Language and Linguistics General Works and Reference Computer Science Political Science Science: General Literature Biology and Life Sciences Agriculture Medicine Education Social Sciences: General Business, Economics and Management Technology, Engineering and Manufacturing
Subject
Accesses
2008 2009
Christianson (2005) calculated use of netLibrary e-books by taking into account the
“difference of opportunity” (p. 359). This involved dividing the total use for a subject category by the total number of titles available in that subject. In this way usage was not misrepresented for categories with few titles. This calculation was applied to the figures above, and the results are represented in the chart in Figure 4.11 below.
Figure 4.11 netLibrary e-book use corrected for difference of opportunity
netLibrary subjects
0.00 0.20 0.40 0.60 0.80 1.00
Agriculture Psychology Medicine Education Biology and Life Sciences Earth Sciences Literature Social Sciences: General Library Science and Publishing Law Philosophy General W orks and Reference Science: General
Business, Economics and Management
Arts Computer Science History: W orld and General Religion Technology, Engineering and Manufacturing Chemistry Language and Linguistics Political Science
Subjects
Accesses
2008 2009
This interpretation provides a picture where Political Science, and Language and Linguistics record the most usage, while Technology, Engineering and Manufacturing appears fourth on the chart and reflects less use than these two HDSS categories.
Table 4.6 represents the number of accesses and the titles accessed during 2008 and 2009. Looking at these figures it is clear that a limited number of titles get most usage. This indicates there are areas of high use of ‘core’ titles, amid low use or no use of the bulk of the collection. This observation has been made by a number of sources in the literature (Christianson, 2005; Levine-Clark, 2007).
Table 4.6 netLibrary usage by subject showing accesses and titles
netLibrary usage 2009/2008 2009 2008
Ssubject Total Titles Accesses Titles Accesses Titles
Agriculture 84 10 5 27 10
Arts 68 4 3 5 1
Biology and Life Sciences 61 8 6 19 7
Business, Economics and
Management 1141 59 44 122 52
Chemistry 23 2 2 7 3
Computer Science 356 2 2 11 6
Earth Sciences 14 4 1 5 1
Education 504 25 21 58 22
General Works and Reference 237 2 2 10 6
History: World and General 128 2 1 4 1
Language and Linguistics 96 2 2 9 1
Law 62 1 1 7 4
Library Science and Publishing 42 1 1 5 2
Literature 191 12 11 17 5
Medicine 574 13 12 50 22
Philosophy 135 1 1 4 3
Political Science 71 7 5 12 5
Psychology 97 7 6 7 0
Religion 106 2 2 8 3
Science: General 39 13 1 16 2
Social Sciences: General 507 29 23 62 27
Technology, Engineering
and Manufacturing 245 39 19 208 29
Total 4781 245 171 673 212
Note: HDSS subjects are italicised and Engineering appears in bold
The AWS, provides over 200 works of literature from many African authors. Usage statistics for this collection differ from those provided by netLibrary as they record both searches and full-text accessed. However, for almost all the months under review, data on sessions was not available from the publishers. This information has therefore been excluded in order to portray a consistent picture during the whole period.
The pattern of use shows that of the many searches conducted in this collection, few result in the full-text being accessed. Generally usage is very low. In 2008, the high points were the months of April, May and September when almost 60 searches were made. However, full-text was accessed less than 10 times during the whole of 2008 and for many months not at all. The usage in 2009 is less than that recorded in 2008,
Figure 4.12 Use of African Writers Series
African W riters Series
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Jan-08 Feb-08
Mar-08 Apr-08
May-08 Jun-08
Jul-08 Aug-08
Sep-08 Oct-08
Nov-08 Dec-08
Jan-09 Feb-09
Mar-09 Apr-09
May-09 Jun-09
Jul-09 Aug-09
Sep-09 Date
Searches Full-text accessed
It is clear from these statistics that the content in this collection receives very limited usage. This seems to be supported by the low statistics for the literature category recorded at the netLibrary. Over 2008/2009, only 29 accesses are recorded for literature on netLibrary and this applied to merely 16 titles of the 191 available.