An informal survey of American Theological Library Association (ATLA) and Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) library directors regarding their practices and thoughts about weeding eBooks was conducted using the email lists for each respective group. See Survey Summary tab for the text and summary of the results.
From: Robin Hartman
To: CCCU [Librarian]; ATLA [directorsonly]
Subject: eBook accounting
Date: May 6, 2016
Dear Colleagues,
I am preparing for a poster session at the ATLA conference this June on the issues revolving around obsolete eBooks. I wondered if anyone else has thought about this. I have a series of questions that I would like to run by my esteemed colleagues. Please reply to me with your answers to as many or few of them as you know how. I greatly appreciate your input and will include it in the poster session and report back to those who are interested. I am interested in eBooks that you purchase with perpetual access rather than subscription services.
1. Have you considered weeding eBooks?
2. If so, what are the criteria used for making those decisions? How are they like/different from weeding print books?
3. How does/would your business office account for removing eBooks as institutional assets? (Do eBooks depreciate? How are they valued at your institution?) 4. What do you do if you prefer not to have a title appear in your ILS catalog or eBook database?
5. You can't give them away... or can you?
6. What are some pros and cons to weeding eBooks?
Thank you!
Robin
Robin R. Hartman
Director of Library Services
Hope International University
2500 E. Nutwood Ave.
Fullerton, CA 92831
(714) 879-3901, ext. 1212
[email protected]
I received nine responses to the first question of whether they have considered weeding eBooks. Most of them have considered weeding eBooks but only one has implemented any eBook weeding practices. Only five respondents continued to answer questions two through six.
Criteria:
Although only one has actually implemented eBook weeding, the others shared thoughtful responses. Four of the five gave criteria they would consider for weeding eBooks, all of which would apply the same criteria to weeding eBooks as they would for print in terms of deselecting outdated information. All four also named criteria that are not applied to eBooks:
• physical condition is not a factor
• physical space is not a factor
• digital storage cost is minimal
• circulation statistics are unknown
Accounting:
Responses become fuzzy when addressing institutional asset valuing and accounting issues. Regarding business office practices, only one indicated that eBooks are treated “the same as print books” in that they are charged to a fund that capitalizes. The others either did not know or said that their business office does not require this kind of accounting.
Discarding:
In response the questions about what they would or could do with weeded eBooks, three preferred to “shadow” or delete eBook records from their ILS and all either guessed or said they did not know whether they could give them away as they might print book discards.
Purpose:
Finally, the pros and cons of weeding eBooks was addressed. The main value mentioned by three of the five respondents would be to remove outdated content, making the collection current and relevant. There were two most reasons for not weeding eBooks. First, it was not worth the effort in terms of time and work for something that costs nearly nothing to maintain. Secondly, it would be a loss of a resource that in some cases would be of value to historical researchers.