Facet Publishing

Summary

Intoduction

This chapter examines the experiences of two FE colleges, City of Bristol College and Yeovil College, both situated in the west of England.

City of Bristol College has nearly 30,000 students based at six main centres across the city. As well as providing a full range of academic and vocational FE courses, the College works with five universities, including the University of Plymouth, to provide HE courses to 1200 students. Yeovil College has over 7000 students and has two main campuses situated in Yeovil, one of which is focused on the provision of HE courses, as well as two sites outside the town.

A range of strategies are used to engage students with e-books, including holding workshops and training sessions, embedding the use of e-formats into the curriculum, linking titles from the VLE, and verbal and visual promotion.

Engaging foundation degree students with e-books: the experience at City of Bristol College

This section draws on both the results produced and the experience gained during a research project which ran from February 2009 to February 2010. The aim of the project was to explore how e-books can effectively support HE students on foundation degree courses delivered in FE colleges. The project was funded by the Higher Education Learning Partnerships Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning's Award Holder scheme, which is based at the University of Plymouth.

There is a relatively small but increasing body of research on the impact of e-books on students, and on the LRCs and libraries supporting them. This is generally focused on students in HE, the two most comprehensive UK studies being the CIBER SuperBook project, a survey of students and staff with 1818 respondents carried out at University College London (Rowlands et al., 2007), and the JISC-funded UK National e-Books Observatory Project (JISC, 2009). Another recent research project was carried out by librarians at the University of the West of England, employing an online survey of students (Briddon et al., 2009).

Summary

There are many published guidelines on the internal use of social media, of which those from IBM and Intel are widely recognized as setting a high standard. This set of guidelines, in alphabetical order, has been developed from a number of different sources.

Adding value

It should always be clear what value your contribution is adding to the business. Be informative and interesting. Your expertise, experience and opinions regarding issues you know well and care about could have a significant impact on the performance of the business.

Anger management

It is very easy for people to use social media to sound off about something. If there is a critical edge to a contribution, come back and look at it again and imagine how you would react if you were the recipient of the posting. Once the words are out there, you cannot get them back, and once an inflammatory discussion gets going the damage can be widespread and long lasting.

Anonymity

All contributions should be signed, and that includes comments. Readers may wish to find out more about you, so make sure your entry in the staff directory is current and relevant.

Approval

There is no approval process for social media within the organization, but it is courteous to inform your manager, and also your colleagues, that you are contributing to a social media channel. You would not want them to be unaware that you were doing so, and be surprised to find that others in the organization were reading your report of a department meeting.

Circulation

You may be making contributions to a blog or wiki to which access is currently restricted to either specific employees or employees with a specific role or function. It is sometimes easy to forget that this is the case and that your contribution may be invisible to many people who could benefit from it. It is also worth remembering that it is still possible for your contribution to escape if someone wishes to circulate it to others. And, some time in the future the social media application, and your contributions to it, could be opened up to a much wider audience than you originally envisaged.

Summary

A number of the contributors to this book have provided their own essential tips on how to create and make the most of a library collection of e-books, and these provide a very useful starting point for those who are new to this area of work.

Part 1: The production and distribution of e-books

Choosing a supplier (Anna Grigson)

With so many different suppliers offering so many different business models it can be difficult to compare like-for-like when choosing a supplier. Create a checklist of the criteria that are important to you – for example, whether you need access for multiple simultaneous users – and use it to compare and rank vendors’ business models, pricing and licence terms to find which ones are the best match for your requirements.

Making good use of Google Books (Kate Price, with thanks to Joseph Ripp)

Use the Advanced Search facility on Google Books to limit the search to ‘Full view only’ in order to identify texts that are freely available in full. (Note that this setting reverts back to ‘All books’ with each new search.)

For those with a Google account, it is possible to set up, organize and annotate a virtual bookshelf on Google Books, which can then be shared with other users by sending them a link, or embedding it within a web page. This may be useful for supporting groups of students with specific projects, or for guiding readers to frequently requested material that is not available within the local library collection.

Part 2: Planning and developing an e-book collection

Providing a good range of material (Martin Palmer)

The single most important contributory factor to the success of public library e-book services (assuming that all of the technical details have been sorted out!) is much the same as that for a print collection – the range and amount of material on offer. Readers will be encouraged to return if there appears to be an abundant choice of material, but if the service does not have a critical mass of titles available for use from day one, then a major promotional opportunity will have been lost.

Summary

Introduction

Intranet managers seem to be on an almost perpetual quest to find ways to justify not only investment in the intranet, but almost the very existence of the application. This is not the case for other enterprise systems. The finance director is not asked to justify the accounting system, nor the personnel director the HR system. The reasons for this have already been discussed. It is therefore important for the governance strategy to present a range of ways in which the value and impact of the intranet can be assessed. This chapter sets out a wide range of options for consideration.

All too often procedures for measuring value and impact are implemented only when a need for investment is seen on the horizon. The result will be that metrics dating back only a few months are available making it difficult for all concerned to work out whether the peaks and troughs are real, an artefact of poor server performance, or indicate the start-up of a major project that required intensive research.

The challenge is to develop a balance between absolute metrics (number of documents downloaded) and relative metrics (percentage increase of documents), and between quantitative metrics (number of users per working day) and qualitative metrics (level of trust in intranet content). This chapter sets out a range of approaches, but to use all of them is unrealistic. The choice of approach must take into account available resources and the way in which the organization typically makes investment decisions.

Website logs

In the website business, logs of clicks and downloads are essential for optimizing the site and justifying enhancements to the technology and the content. Data on page hits alone can be quite useful, but the paths that people take through the site before taking an action to buy or download also provide very valuable information. It is also widely recognized that visitors to a website often arrive via a search site, such as Google; knowing which page they land on when arriving is important in developing effective routes through the site.

Many years ago, at a KMWorld/Intranets conference in California, aspeaker suggested that in the intranet world HITS was an acronym for How Idiots Track Success of an intranet. This is perhaps an extreme view, but not far from the truth. A few years ago a company was heavily involved in developing its business interests in China.

Summary

Introduction

In this chapter, we consider the background to the development of an ebook collection within the FE sector. The themes of the chapter include how e-books fit in with a growing emphasis on using technology to enhance learning across the sector, the ways in which an e-book collection can be developed and managed, budgeting for e-books and finally the potential impact on staffing.

Throughout, we will be using examples from Yeovil College, a tertiary college providing post-compulsory FE opportunities to around 7000 learners from South Somerset and North Dorset in the UK. The college has two main campuses situated in Yeovil, the Further Education campus and University Centre Yeovil (UCY), which focuses on HE. There are also two off-site locations, North Dorset Skills Centre and Lufton Construction Centre. The college offers academic qualifications ranging from diplomas aimed at 14–16 year olds up to first degree level, as well as vocational courses, apprenticeships and courses aimed at adults in the workplace.

Using technology to enhance learning

In 2005 the UK Government produced Harnessing Technology: transforming learning and children's services, a report highlighting the ways in which technology can enhance the work of the education sector (Department for Education and Skills, 2005). It fostered an expectation that colleges would embrace many types of digital technology and ensure that all learners have the opportunity to access e-resources as part of their educational experience, particularly in order to direct and manage aspects of their own learning.

More recently, the strategy was reviewed and revised by Becta, the government agency responsible for promoting innovative use of technology in learning, resulting in two reports: Harnessing Technology: next generation learning 2008–14 (Becta, 2008) and Harnessing Technology Review 2009: the role of technology in further education and skills (Becta, 2010). These reports conclude that the need to use technology in education remains, although some issues have been identified with the transition of young learners from a school setting to a FE setting where technology is more central to independent study.

Gunter et al. (2009) identify differences in attitude towards technology between the Google Generation, which was born after 1994 and has therefore been brought up in the internet era, Generation Y (born between 1978 and 1993) and Generation X (born prior to 1978).

Summary

Introduction

Intranet managers often find that they are directly involved in decisions about selecting a new CMS or search application. Usually this is driven by the apparent inability of the current CMS to meet requirements; sometimes by concern about the level of technical support from the vendor, systems integrator or internal resources. In larger companies it is not unusual for there to be more than one CMS in use, especially if the company has grown through acquisition, and often there can be different version releases of the same CMS. Another common scenario is that the intranet and the website both use the same CMS; there is a good business case for changing the CMS to meet the website requirements, resulting in the intranet ending up on a totally unsuitable platform.

Specifying and selecting new CMS, search, social media and collaboration software can be quite challenging, because the daily management of the intranet has to be continued, and on top of this work a substantial amount of time will have to be dedicated to the process of selecting and implementing the software. The process will involve working very closely with an IT department, which is unlikely to be able to offer much experience of CMS and search software to the intranet team.

Over the last few years the selection process has moved on from being one in which vendors were provided with a table of functional requirements and the responses were scored and tabulated so that the vendor with the highest score could be given the contract. (And it was not unusual for there to be several hundred requirements.) The focus has now switched to being one in which the emphasis is not on what might be regarded as the nominal functionality of the application, but on what the application will enable the organization to achieve.

Intranet content management

The main differences between an intranet and a website, which may make a CMS designed for website use unsuitable for an intranet, have been summarized in Chapter 6.

There are many different CMS solutions for intranets, ranging in price from zero- or nominal-cost open-source applications right up to portal products such as IBM WebSphere. Somewhere in the middle in cost terms comes Microsoft SharePoint.

Summary

Introduction

Supporting collaborative working has only emerged as an intranet requirement over the last few years, largely as a result of the launch of SharePoint 2007 towards the end of 2006. Of course, there had been collaborative applications before SharePoint 2007 (including SharePoint 2003 and Lotus Notes), but a combination of marketing, functionality and a strong business requirement has brought collaborative applications to the very top of the requirements list of senior managers. This presents a substantial challenge for an intranet manager, because most intranets probably use a CMS application that means they are, essentially, information publishing platforms. WCMSs were not designed to support the often document-intensive world of collaboration, to which social media applications have been bolted on as an afterthought.

The situation is now changing rapidly and an important and farreaching governance decision is whether the provision and management of collaboration applications should be the responsibility of the intranet manager. This chapter does not set out to be a treatise on collaboration, but only to highlight the issues that should be considered by the intranet team.

The value of collaboration

In 1624 the English metaphysical poet John Donne remarked:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main …

A more recent poet, John Lennon, wrote in one of the Beatles’ songs, ‘I get by with a little help from my friends’. In whatever role we play in an organization, the decisions we have to make are challenging ones, and there is a natural urge to share the risk in making a decision, even if it means we may not get all of the due reward. The critical success factors for collaboration, based on the work by Morten T. Hansen,1 include:

Summary

Introduction

Printed books do not require batteries or charging, but they do have their issues – readers may not be able to get the most out of a text if they do not possess good eyesight, lack motor abilities, have a specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia, or if the text is not in their first language. This is always assuming that they are able to find a physical copy of the text in the first place: the local library may not hold a copy, or the reader may find it difficult to navigate the shelves in order to locate it.

E-books can offer solutions to issues of accessibility, particularly for remote users, but they can also add an additional layer of complexity for readers, simply because they are inaccessible without the use of information technology, both hardware and software. This chapter explores some of the challenges that this presents, as well as some of the opportunities offered by the availability of books in the virtual world, particularly for mobile learning.

Background

In a traditional library environment, learners can browse books in situ, but if they wish to borrow a book to use outside the library, it will need to be issued. This process ensures that the learner has the right to borrow the book, that the library is aware which book has been borrowed, and that the learner is aware of when the book is due back. Most institutions issue students with a card that identifies them as belonging to that institution and using either a number, barcode or chip associates that student with a record in the LMS. The main purpose of this system is to manage stock levels and prevent abuse, for example by users attempting to borrow more titles than is permitted, or keeping those that they have borrowed for too long, and thus maintain the efficiency of the service for all users.

A similar system is required to ensure that an institution only allows authorized users to access its e-book collections. If the library chooses to loan e-book readers pre-loaded with texts, then a similar issuing system to that for printed books can be used.

Summary

Introduction

One model of the way in which users adopt new technologies is the Gartner Technology Hype Cycle, illustrated in Figure 14.1. This model works well for intranets. The project begins from a technology trigger, such as the inability of the CMS to support user requirements, or the enterprise adoption of Microsoft SharePoint. Work begins on implementing the new technology platform and, especially among the senior management team, there are expectations that the new intranet will soon make a significant impact on business performance.

The reality is almost always that the technology enhancements tend to make life easier for content contributors and for the staff administering the intranet, but the impact on user experience is either quite small (‘So why did we change the CMS?’) or so major that users find they cannotlocate the information they need (‘So why did we change the CMS?’). The Trough of Disillusionment has been reached. Gradually, users and the intranet team find that there are some benefits from the technology change, but that it takes time to reach, let alone exceed, Plateau of Productivity of the previous system.

The intranet strategy needs to include a marketing strategy, the aim of which is to deflate unrealistic expectations, not allow any significant disillusionment to go unaddressed, and enlighten users regarding the value and impact of the intranet. Other enterprise applications do not need such a strategy because the people using them have no alternative – the application is embedded in their daily work (such as Accounts or HR) for compliance and audit reasons. This is rarely the case with the intranet. Another difference between the intranet and, for example, the HR system is that the value of the intranet to two people sitting next to each other could be significantly different. One may be a long-term employee who has spent much of their career in the organization in a variety of positions. The other may have just joined the organization and have a similar skill background, but gained in other industries. Each will take a very different view of the intranet.

Of course it is not possible to enhance the value and impact of an intranet until some are metrics in place (see Chapter 15) that enable the current situation to be determined – and the extent of a marketing campaign success to be measured.

Summary

Despite the fact that e-books (electronic books) have been in existence for decades in various guises and added to library collections for several years now, there has been a noticeable lack of published manuals on the subject.

This is, we feel, due to the rapidly evolving nature of the market. There is now a plethora of different types of digital object which might be termed ‘e-books’ and a bewildering number of business and access models to match. It may be that many authors and publishers have been waiting for this situation to stabilize before committing to such a serious undertaking as a whole book on the subject.

However, the pace of change shows no signs of abating. If anything, now that e-books have come to the attention of the wider populace, the rate of growth is accelerating, with large collections of texts in e-formats becoming available to students, public library users and consumers alike, and with the revolution in internet-enabled mobile devices meaning that e-texts can be accessed at times and in locations that would have been impossible just a few years ago.

Therefore, the editors of this book felt that it would be timely to bring together a selection of practical information, best practice and case studies which would be of assistance to information and library professionals who are managing collections of e-books right now, even though it may be that some of the finer details will be out of date by the time of publication. We hope that it will be of interest to those who are just beginning to dip their toes in the water, as well as those who have been involved with e-books for years, and are interested to know what is happening at other libraries and in other sectors than their own. We also hope that it will be of interest to a wider audience, ranging from students of information and library studies to publishers who may currently be producing e-books or looking to do so in the future.

To bring together this work, we have drawn upon the expertise of a range of authors from diverse backgrounds, each of whom adds a valuable perspective. Inevitably, there is some duplication of subject matter across the chapters.

Summary

Introduction

The global adoption of Microsoft SharePoint by organizations of all sizes means that in a book that is in other respects resolutely vendor neutral it is important to highlight the benefits and issues that arise when considering the use of SharePoint for an intranet. The core problem is that often there is no opportunity to consider the use of SharePoint because the decision has already been made by the IT department to implement it. The intranet manager is then faced with the decision of how best to make use of the situation.

This chapter does not attempt to provide a technical evaluation of either Microsoft SharePoint 2007 (often abbreviated to MOSS07) or Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (SP2010). A report from the Intranet Benchmarking Forum looks in detail at how SP2010 can be used for an intranet; there is also a report from the Forum on MOSS07.1 The Real Story Group offers a set of detailed evaluations of SharePoint and these are essential reading for any intranet manager who is unfamiliar with the product suite.

As the notional owners of the SharePoint application will be the IT department, and because SharePoint is a development platform, IT will almost certainly wish to take a lead in setting the implementation objectives and timetable. SharePoint is certainly a development platform, but it is equally a business delivery platform. The business has to set and assess the progress towards meeting clear business objectives. This is especially challenging with SharePoint because some departments may want to use just one functional area while others may require several areas to be developed in parallel and integrated together.

There is no doubt that good intranets can be built using MOSS07 or SP2010, and indeed some of the intranets described in the Nielsen Norman Annual Intranet Designreports2 do use MOSS07 as their platform. However, there are probably a much greater number of intranets where the move to a SharePoint application has not met expectations.3 This is almost always the result of:

Summary

Introduction

This chapter deals with the transitions, opportunities and challenges for publishers, both large and small, arising from the expanding market for e-books. The aim of the chapter is to examine some of the fundamental business practices, cost structures and market forces that affect the ability to create a sustainable business model for e-books, whether in a forprofit, not-for-profit or ‘not-yet-for-profit’ publishing operation. A further aim is to provide an insight into the process of creating high quality books and e-books, to raise awareness of the effort and investment involved, and to examine the concept of value with regard to published information.

The observations that follow are primarily from the perspective of a publisher of professional and scholarly books in the science, technology and medical (STM) areas, but consumer (trade) publishing is also touched upon. The author also brings to bear the experience of founding a start-up publishing company in a market that expects online information to be both readily accessible and inexpensive. Overall, the chapter describes a fast-evolving and sometimes daunting environment for many of those currently working in publishing, and provides some background for library and information professionals who may not be aware of the pressures that are currently being faced by the industry.

The impact of digital technology on the publishing World

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the emergence of e-books will have the most profound impact on the book publishing business since Gutenberg's introduction of the mechanical movable type printing press in the fifteenth century.

In recent years a number of technologies have converged to allow the creation, sale and distribution of e-books: personal computers, pagemaking software, the internet, mobile communication devices, broadband wireless, e-reader devices and so on. However, the technologies alone do not greatly alter the traditional ways and means of the publishing business. In fact, perhaps the most important change is the potential for a dramatic restructuring of the financial model of the business. For the first time since movable type was introduced, the industry may be facing a situation where the technology available and the consumers who use it come together to create an environment where the price for books and information substantially decreases.

Summary

Introduction

Although public libraries are commonly perceived to be recent arrivals on the e-book scene, some have been involved in providing digital material for recreational reading for almost as long as the technology has been available. Over the same period, there has been a renewed emphasis on the importance of the promotion of reading to the mission of the public library. This chapter explores changing attitudes to both e-books and reader development, and the ways that the two have intersected.

Technology and content

Experience among those public libraries that were early adopters of ebooks tends to be fairly consistent in terms of engaging readers: they all found it a very difficult process, at least initially. There were two main reasons for this, each of which is significant enough by itself, but which together can form a cycle from which it is difficult to escape.

First, there is the question of the technology. Five hundred years in the development of the printed book has created a product that is cheap, familiar, easy to use and that does not need to be recharged or connected to the internet. Why then would anyone choose to move to a platform for reading that can appear confusing, has controls that seem to work in a less than intuitive way, has a form of text display that can be tiring and uncomfortable to read and that may also be very expensive?

Second, there is the question of content. In the 1990s, the range of material available to public library users in e-book format was extremely limited. As mainstream publishers struggled to identify sufficient commercial justification for producing their material as e-books (although moving to digitally based processes to produce printed material clearly had a number of benefits, which they quickly took advantage of), most of the titles available at that time were either comparatively specialist reference or other non-fiction titles, or out of copyright material such as that provided by Project Gutenberg.

Summary

Why is it important to have an accessible e-book service?

There are three main reasons why it is important for libraries to have an e-book service that is accessible to people with print disabilities.

Restricted choice

We estimate that fewer than 5% of books published are made available in alternative formats such as large print, so readers with sight problems or other print impairments (i.e. difficulties with reading printed text) have restricted choice.

In 2009, 133,224 new books were published in the UK. Charitable organizations such as RNIB convert books to alternative formats such as audio, braille and large print, but only have the capacity to transcribe a small proportion of books published.

Potential of e-books to improve access to books

Accessible e-book services have the power to transform access to books for people with sight problems or other print impairments, giving them access to the same book, at the same time as everyone else. Books in electronic format are inherently more accessible than print, as they have the potential to allow the user to adapt the content to their individual needs. The number of new and existing books being made available in e-book format is growing every day, dwarfing the number of titles available in alternative formats.

Legal position

Libraries have a statutory duty to promote equality of opportunity and not to discriminate against people with disabilities.

Any public library planning to deliver an e-book service should carry out an impact assessment under the Disability Equality Duty (DED) on the effect that such a service would have on blind and partially sighted people. They should then take steps to minimize any negative impact or to make alternative proposals.

If a library's existing e-book service is inaccessible to people with disabilities they would need to make alternative arrangements to fulfil the reasonable adjustments duty under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).

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Contents

12 - Engaging students with e-books in further education

Summary

Acknowledgments

Index

Appendix: Guidelines for social media use

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Checklist for e-book acquisition

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15 - Measuring user satisfaction

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6 - E-books for further education

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7 - Specifying and selecting software

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5 - Enhancing collaboration

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Editors’ note

Glossary

10 - Information technology and e-books: challenges and opportunities

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14 - Marketing the intranet

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Part 5 - The future of e-books

Preface

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8 - Using Microsoft SharePoint for intranets

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1 - Publishing e-books: challenges and perspectives

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11 - Public library users connecting with e-books

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Selected e-book suppliers

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