Scholarly e-books usage and information seeking behaviour: a deep log analysis of MyiLibrary

Scholarly e-book usage and information seeking behaviour: a deep log analysis of MyiLibrary CIBER

Final Report, November 2009

Funded by JISC, JISC Collections provides its members with a catalogue of free and subscription-based online resources such as e-journals, e-books, full text databases, digital images, online film and geospatial data. Core to the service provided by JISC Collections is the quality evaluation of online resources, the expert negotiation process and the efficient national licensing undertaken for each online resource. JISC Collections always strives to widen accessibility to online resources, save its members time and money and to evolve licensing in line with members needs and the digital environment. www.jisc-collections.ac.uk

Scholarly e-book usage and information seeking behaviour: a deep log analysis of MyiLibrary CIBER, Final Report, November 2009

Glossary ..........................................................................................................................6 Key findings ....................................................................................................................7 Use..............................................................................................................................7 Reading online /viewing ...............................................................................................7 Patterns over time .......................................................................................................7 Subject diversity ..........................................................................................................8 Institutional take-up .....................................................................................................8 Number of e-books and pages viewed ........................................................................ 8 Type of pages viewed..................................................................................................9 Searching ....................................................................................................................9 Subject or persistent searchers ................................................................................. 10 Referrer link/discovery method .................................................................................. 10 Location ....................................................................................................................10 Individual title analysis ............................................................................................... 11 Differences with e-journal usage ............................................................................... 11 1.0 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 12 2.0 Methodology............................................................................................................ 12 2.0 Working definitions .............................................................................................. 14 3.0 Results ....................................................................................................................15 3.1 Use ......................................................................................................................15 3.1.1 Daily use ....................................................................................................... 18 3.1.1.1 Page views ............................................................................................ 18 3.1.1.2 Sessions ................................................................................................ 20 3.1.1.3 Time online ............................................................................................ 21 3.1.2 Monthly use .................................................................................................. 21 3.1.2.1 Page views ............................................................................................ 21 3.1.2.2 Sessions ................................................................................................ 23 3.1.2.3 Time online ............................................................................................ 24 3.1.3 Day of the week use ..................................................................................... 25 3.1.3.1 Page views ............................................................................................ 25 3.1.3.2 Session time .......................................................................................... 26 3.1.4 Hour of the day use ...................................................................................... 26 3.1.5 University analysis ........................................................................................ 27 3.2 Information Seeking (session data) ..................................................................... 31 3.2.1 Site busyness ............................................................................................... 31 3.2.2 Content viewed ............................................................................................. 32 3.2.3 Searching (Use of the MyiLibrary search facility) .......................................... 33 3.2.4 Access methods ........................................................................................... 35 3.2.5 Location ........................................................................................................ 38 3.2.6 Subject analysis ............................................................................................ 40 3.2.7 Individual Book title analysis ......................................................................... 45 3.2.7.1 Within subject use .................................................................................. 46 3.2.7.2 Institutional analysis ............................................................................... 50 3.2.8. Case studies ................................................................................................ 53

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List of Figures Figure 1. MyiLibrary homepage ..................................................................................... 13 Figure 2. Page view time (grouped) for JISC e-books and non JISC e-books ............... 17 Figure 3. Number of page views by day (Nov 2007 to Dec 2008) -JISC e-books........... 18 Figure 4. Number of page views by day (Nov 2007 to Dec 2008) – non-JISC e-books .. 19 Figure 5. Percentage page views by day (Nov 2007 to Dec 2008) for JISC and non JISC e-books .........................................................................................................................20 Figure 6. Number of sessions by day (Nov2007 to Dec 2008) – JISC e-books .............. 20 Figure 7. Daily median page view time (seconds) for JISC e-books .............................. 21 Figure 8. Average (mean) use per day by month – JISC e-books.................................. 22 Figure 9. Percentage use share for JISC and non JISC e-books by month ................... 22 Figure 10. Sum of page views per month – broken down for JISC and non JISC e-books ......................................................................................................................................23 Figure 11. Percentage session share by JISC and non JISC e-books by month ........... 24 Figure 12. Page view time in seconds for JISC and non JISC e-books, by month ......... 25 Figure 13. Percentage distribution of use over week - JISC e-books ............................. 26 Figure 14. Percentage use share distribution over hour of day for JISC and non JISCebooks ............................................................................................................................27 Figure 15. Percentage session share of content views for JIC and non JISC e-books... 32 Figure 16. View time by page type ................................................................................ 33 Figure 17. Referrer links to the JISC e-books……………...…………………………….46 Figure 18. Identifiable referrer links to the JISC e-books……………………………….47 Figure 19. Location of access (percentage of sessions) ................................................ 39 Figure 20. Percentage use by hour and location weekend JISC e-books ..................... 39 Figure 21. Percentage use share of subject by month – JISC e-books.......................... 41 Figure 22. Percentage share distribution of page view time by subject .......................... 42 Figure 23. Percentage share of subject viewed by location – sessions JISC e-books ... 43 Figure 24. Percentage share of content views in a session across subject – sessions viewing JISC e-books .................................................................................................... 44 Figure 25. Percentage share of session time (grouped) across subject – sessions viewing JISC e-books .................................................................................................... 44 Figure 26. Percentage share distribution of page view time by JISC Media Studies ebooks ............................................................................................................................47 Figure 27. Percentage use share of book viewed across month – Media Studies JISC ebooks ............................................................................................................................47 Figure 28. Percentage use share of book viewed across month – JISC e-book Business titles ..............................................................................................................................48 Figure 29. Percentage use share of book viewed across month – JISC Engineering ebooks ............................................................................................................................50 Figure 30. Monthly use of JISC e-book Media Gender and Identity by three universities ......................................................................................................................................51 Figure 31. Monthly use of JISC e-book Management Concepts & Practices by three universities ....................................................................................................................52 Figure 32. Monthly use of Management JISC e-book Chemical Engineering Volume 6: Chemical Engineering Design by three universities ....................................................... 53 Figure 33. Percentage share of use of JISC e-books by month of eight universities ...... 54 Figure 34. Percentage share of page view time (grouped) by case study university ...... 55 Figure 35. Number of content views in a session for 8 universities ................................ 55 Figure 36: JISC e-book use by Month for four universities............................................. 56 Figure 37. Percentage share of subject usage for eight universities .............................. 57 Figure 38. Monthly use broken down by subject for Birmingham ................................... 57 CIBER at University College London, page 3 of 60

Figure 39. Percentage use share of book viewed across month – JISC Engineering ebooks ............................................................................................................................58 Figure 40. Monthly use broken down by subject for Glamorgan .................................... 59 Figure 41. Monthly use broken down by subject for Liverpool ....................................... 59 Figure 42. Percentage use share of book viewed by Liverpool across month – JISC Business e-books .......................................................................................................... 60

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List of Tables Table 1. The JISC e-books ............................................................................................ 13 Table 2. Summary usage metrics for JISC and non JISC e-books ................................ 16 Table 3. Page view time (measures of central tendency) .............................................. 17 Table 4. Universities ranked by total successful section requests January 2008 – December 2008............................................................................................................. 28 Table 5. Top 20 search expressions .............................................................................. 34 Table 6. Top ten universities using VLEs to access MyiLibrary titles ............................. 38 Table 7. Number and percentage of JISC e-book collection by subject ......................... 40 Table 8. Rank order by usage of the 26 JISC e-books .................................................. 45 Table 9. Number of JISC e-books appearing in the top fifty of all e-book use, ranked in 10s ................................................................................................................................46 Table 10. Media Studies: individual title rankings .......................................................... 46 Table 11. Business and Management Studies: individual title rankings ......................... 48 Table 12. JISC Engineering e-books: individual title rankings........................................ 49 Table 13. top ten universities using the JISC e-book Media Gender and Identity .......... 51 Table 14. Top ten universities making use of the JISC e-book Management Concepts & Practices .......................................................................................................................52 Table 15. Top ten universities using the JISC e-book Chemical Engineering Volume 6: Chemical Engineering Design ....................................................................................... 53

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Glossary Observatory project = refers to the JISC national e-books observatory project. 127 universities participated in the project and used the JISC e-books.

JISC e-books = the course text e-books licensed by JISC Collections and made freely available to UK HE from September 2007 to August 2009. 26 of the 36 JISC e-books were made available on the MyiLibrary platform and are included in this deep log analysis report.

JISC disciplines = the subject areas of the 26 JISC e-books on the MyiLibrary platform.

There were 5 in business and management, 7 in media studies and 14 in engineering.

Non JISC e-books = 10,000 e-books available on the MyiLibrary platform that are actively being used by the 127 universities. These 10,000 e-books provide a control group against which to compare the JISC e-books.

Page view time = the difference in time between one page and the next page viewed.

Each page on the MyiLibrary platform has to be downloaded. The online page is the same as the page in the printed book.

Page views = includes views to book covers, book table of contents, foreword pages and content pages (the main pages of the e-book)

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Key findings Use • Over the period November 2007 to December 2008 across 127 higher education institutions the 26 JISC e-books attracted over 761,000 page views, which meant that, on average, each e-book obtained around 18,800 views. The JISC e-books were also the subject of over 46,000 user sessions. Sessions lasted around 13 minutes and on average 8 pages were viewed during the session.

• In comparison with the non JISC e-books used by participating universities, (over 10,000 of which were evaluated for comparative purposes forming a control group), the JISC e-books attracted a little less use (18,796 views compared to 20,132), recorded significantly shorter page view time (23 to 28 seconds), slightly fewer pages views in a session (7.9 as opposed to 8.6) and recorded significantly shorter session times (13 compared to 18 minutes).

• Of the total of 10,026 e-books that were evaluated on the MyiLibrary platform, the JISC e-books made up just 2.6% of the total collection. Therefore 46,263 sessions (compared to 416,907 sessions for the non JISC e-books) represents about 11.5% of all sessions, which is a good performance on the part of the JISC e-books.

Reading online /viewing • Pages of books are relatively short (compared to journal articles for example) and can certainly be navigated and power browsed in less than a minute and in more than 10 seconds. 85% of all page views to the JISC e-books were under 1 minute, and around a third were under 5 seconds.

• Those users viewing pages in fewer than 5 seconds may be sending the page to a printer or flicking through it; they are highly unlikely to be reading the content on the screen in real-time.

• A small proportion, 15% of users and 17% in the case of non JISC e-books took over a minute viewing a page. These times may be indicative of users that state they prefer to read online.

Patterns over time • • • • •

Course text e-book use is very much tied to the working week and teaching terms.

The high peaks and low troughs over the academic year are more evident with the JISC e-books, clearly demonstrating the flux in demand for course text e-books in line with teaching and learning timetables.

The JISC e-books made up 21% of all e-book usage in February 2008, a high water mark.

The low point in use occurs at about 5 in the morning, thereafter climbs to a peak at lunch time – 9% of daily use occurred during the 1pm slot - after that it falls steeply between 1pm to 5pm and then less steeply between 5pm to 10pm.

Just over a quarter of use occurred after 6pm and before 8am, a substantial proportion.

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Subject diversity • There were interesting and significant subject differences.

• Engineering, which made up about half (53%) of the JISC e-books, accounted for less than a quarter (22%) of usage, the 5 Business titles (19% of the JISC ebooks) accounted for just under half (46%) of usage while the 7 Media studies titles (26% of the JISC e-books) accounted for about a third (31%) of usage.

Clearly despite the small number of e-books, the business titles were the most popular.

• The subjects each had their own peak months of use. The peak month for media studies e-books was April 2008 where they took 39% of the subject share. The lowest percentage share was in August 2008 with just 22%.

• The peak month for the business e-books was August 2008 with a 63% share; the lowest percentage share was in April with just 35%. The engineering titles peak month was in February 2008 reaching a peak share of 28%. The lowest percentage share was in August 2008 with just 15%.

• With regard to page view time about half of users viewing the JISC media studies e-books viewed pages for less than five seconds, a very high percentage.

Business and engineering subjects saw considerably less users viewing pages for under 5 seconds (23% and 26%) and had a greater share of users viewing content between 10 seconds but under a minute (respectively, 42% and 41%).

• A large proportion of business users, access e-books from off campus.

Engineering users prefer to use the JISC e-books on campus (32% as opposed to 16% for off campus) and media studies users seem to use the e-books as much on campus (26%) as off campus (23%).

• Media Studies had the busiest users, with 40% viewing more than 11 pages in a session Institutional take-up • •

•

The top five universities by JISC e-book usage were: Sheffield Hallam University, University of Sheffield, University of Glamorgan, University of Birmingham and the University of Nottingham.

The five universities which increased their rank position most when non JISC and JISC e-book usage are compared were: University of Hertfordshire (ranked 107 for non JISC use, ranked 15 for JISC e-book use), University of Newcastle Upon Tyne (125 and 37), Liverpool John Moores University (101 and 26), University of Exeter (84 and 11) and Aberystwyth University (102 and 29).

The top ten universities by usage accounted for over a quarter (26.7%) of JISC ebook usage. The top twenty universities account for under a half (44.3%) of all JISC e-book use. Half of all usage of the JISC e-books was undertaken by the top 24 universities.

Number of e-books and pages viewed • •

Sessions viewing both JISC and non-JISC e-books viewed more content pages 52% viewed 11 or more pages in a session compared to just 30% for JISC and non JISC e-books.

Sessions viewing either JISC or non JISC e-books saw a similar number of pages viewed. Over a third of sessions (40%) viewed three content pages or less, about

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•

a third of sessions viewed between 4 to 10 pages and third of sessions viewed more than 10 content pages.

About one in ten sessions (9%) that just viewed JISC e-book pages viewed more than one title in a session and this compared to about a quarter of sessions (25%) that did so for sessions viewing non-JISC e-books. This means that most of the JISC e-book sessions (81%) viewed only one title but viewed the same percentage of pages as the non JISC e-books.

Type of pages viewed • • • •

Most views, nearly three quarters (70%), were to text pages, 15% were to foreword pages, 4% were to cover pages and 11% of views were to the Table of Contents (ToC).

In terms of page view time, unsurprisingly perhaps, foreword pages were viewed for the least amount of time; half were viewed for less than 5 seconds.

Cover pages unexpectedly were viewed for the longest time and perhaps this is due to users becoming distracted by other activities that cause them to leave the MyiLibrary platform such as Facebook, and never log off that cover page.

Interestingly, although a very small percentage of views are in the 3 – 5 minutes, where pages are viewed for 3 – 5 minutes, it is the content pages that receive the highest amount of views. This could be an indicative of the small percentage of users that do read online.

Searching • A low amount, approximately one in ten (9%) of all sessions (viewing JISC ebooks, non JISC e-books and both) saw the search facility being utilised.

• Sessions viewing JISC e-books were more likely to have used the search: 11% compared to 8% for non JISC e-books.

• Those sessions using the search facility were twice as likely to view more than one e-book in a session compared to those sessions that did not use the search facility and were more likely to view more content pages in a session. Of course the two go hand in hand. Thus those sessions using a search facility were more likely to view over 20 pages in a session about a quarter did so as compared to 17% of sessions that did not use the search facility • The top twenty search expressions used for all e-books accounted for less than 10% of all search terms, a low rate of concentration but not a surprising one given the encyclopaedic nature of MyiLibrary content.

• Sessions viewing a JISC e-book business title were about twice as likely to have used a search expression, 18% did so, compared to media (9%) or engineering (9%).

• Sessions originating from the campus were less likely to use the search facility about 8% did so compared to 20% of UK off campus and a third (33%) of overseas users.

• Overall, the low use of the search facility on the MyiLibrary platform indicates that users do not favour this functionality to navigate to e-books or to find e-books on the platform.

•

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Subject or persistent searchers • There was a type of search which led to much more substantial sessions, which were longer in duration and saw more pages and titles being viewed. These searches were characterized by both JISC and non-JISC MyiLibrary books being viewed. Nearly 4% of the sessions saw such searches being conducted. It is possible that these were subject searches rather than individual title ones, or that the users responsible for such searches were persistent or core users, those people clearly interested in the product.

Referrer link/discovery method • The referrer link of the log provides an indication of where the users came from before they arrived at MyiLibrary platform. Although it was not possible to identify the origin of 44% of the visits to JISC e-books we can analyse the remainder. Of those remaining, it is clear that the library plays the central role in discovery of ebooks; 37% of referrer links clearly identified the catalogue or a catalogue / LMS system and 61% of referrer links were ‘library links’ that could have been from the catalogue but were not identifiable but certainly came from the library.

• Although only 2% of links were identifiable as coming via a VLE, the results indicate that user coming in via a VLE are more likely to view more than 20 pages of an e-book and to spend longer sessions viewing e-books. This indicates that VLE’s may drive usage up.

• The use of the VLEs increased steeply from September 2008 to a peak in October 2008, this might be because of inductions and the start of the new academic year.

• Business and management students used the VLE much more (305 sessions) than those in Engineering (74) and Media Studies (50). Again, this could relate to the nature of distance learning and overseas business courses.

Location • About one in twenty (6%) views were made off-campus and not in the UK by higher education users, about a third (31% for JISC e-books and 35% for non JISC e-books) of views were made off-campus in the UK and about two-thirds (63% for JISC e-books and 60% for non JISC e-books) were made on campus at higher education institutions in the UK. • Persistent users undertaking longer sessions and investigating a number of ebooks in the same sessions prefer to search on-campus.

• Off campus (including overseas) use was highest in March 2008 and June 2008, where it accounted for more than 40% of use and least in September 2008 when it fell to 25%. This is another example of the importance of 24/7 online access during the peak teaching and revision months when students require constant access to their course texts.

• Off campus use increased by 12% on a weekend, however even so about half (50%) of weekend use was made on campus.

• During the evenings and nights more e-book use took place off-campus than on despite the long opening hours most universities now have in place.

• In terms of time, well over a third (37%) of UK HE on campus sessions viewing JISC e-books lasted over 30 minutes, compared to a quarter (25%) for off-campus CIBER at University College London, page 10 of 60

sessions. Users appear to spend considerably more time on e-books at their place of work or study.

Individual title analysis •

•

•

A relatively small number of titles accounted for the vast majority of use. The top 5 titles each attracted more that 10% of overall use, so just 5 titles, about 20% of all the JISC e-books accounted for over 50% of all use. Furthermore, the top ten titles account for 78% of JISC e-books usage.

The most popular title was a business and management title, Organisational Behaviour and Analysis: An Integrated Approach and this title attracted 82,787 views over the period November 2007 to December 2008 and accounted for about 11% of views to the JISC e-books.

In the top ten most used JISC and non JISC e-books on the MyiLibrary platform, seven JISC e-books appeared. This is an extraordinary performance given that there were only 26 JISC e-books.

Differences with e-journal usage • Because much of our knowledge about usage in the digital environment comes from e-journal studies, much of the e-book data looks different, and it is. Most importantly it is much more volatile and tied to the academic teaching rhythms.

Use was also lower, mainly because they have not entered the academic mainstream yet - journals are well-entrenched, and partly because they don’t have quite such a big audience (this is yet to be tested).

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1.0 Introduction This is a report of a highly innovative and pioneering project called the JISC national ebooks observatory. This project sought to obtain a comprehensive and robust understanding of e-book use in the scholarly environment by licensing course text ebooks and making them freely available to UK higher education and then watching and describing what happened. It was a ‘pebble in the pond’ experiment. The ‘watching and describing’ was undertaken through an evidence-based methodology called deep log analysis, which makes sense of how people behave in the virtual environment.

The specific aim of the deep log element of the study reported here was to provide an assessment of the use and information seeking behaviour associated with the 26 higher education course text e-books which were provided freely to 127 UK universities during the period 2007 to 2009 on the MyiLibrary platform. The twenty six course text e-books (which from herein will be called the “JISC e-books”) covered the fields of media studies, engineering and business and management. To provide the essential context and comparison more than 10,000 MyiLibrary e-books used by the participating 127 universities but not provided as part of the experiment were also evaluated. So in effect this report is an analysis of the use of 10,026 e-books by 127 universities, an enormous evidence base, which can be used by the information and publishing community to manage the next digital transition, that of the textbook.

The broad analysis provided here covers the first 14 months of the study and is based on nearly 7 million page views and over a half a million user sessions or visits conducted by, probably, thousands of staff and students. As a result it probably constitutes the largest and most robust evaluation of e-book use and information seeking behaviour ever conducted. Furthermore, the type of data that can only be furnished by deep log analysis means that it is also the most detailed, offering unique insights into e-book information seeking behaviour, like, for instance, the exact time, day, and month people use an e-book. The JISC e-books included some big selling textbook titles but were mostly run-of-the-mill coursework titles. The 10,000 other MyiLibrary titles (which from herein will be called the “non JISC e-books”) covered every subject under the sun and therefore, together with the JISC e-books, made the e-book population representative of university e-book offerings in the UK. Usage was comprehensively measured in terms of page views, number of sessions conducted and time spent online (session duration or length). Trends over time have been established. The following aspects of information seeking were also examined: method of access (referrer link), location of access, session busyness, searching/browsing, type of content viewed, individual titles and subjects used. In addition the report furnishes analyses of individual university performance.

2.0 Methodology Raw transactional log data were obtained from the MyiLibrary platform (Figure 1) for the 26 JISC e-books (Table 1) and processed using deep log techniques pioneered by CIBER to describe usage and information-seeking behaviour in the digital space.

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Figure 1. MyiLibrary homepage

Table 1. The JISC e-books Business and management (5) Blyton & Turnball, The Dynamics of Employee Relations, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004 (3rd ed.).

Hannagan, Management Concepts & Practices, Pearson Education, 2004 (4th ed.).

Hooley, Saunders & Piercy, Marketing Strategy & Competitive Positioning, Pearson Education, 2003 (3rd ed.).

Pickton & Hudson Broderick, Integrated Marketing Communication, Pearson Education, 2004 (2nd ed.).

Rollinson, Organisational Behaviour and Analysis: An Integrated Approach, Pearson Education, 2004 (3rd ed.).

Engineering (14) Ashby & Jones, Engineering Materials 1, Elsevier, 2005 (3rd ed.).

Ashby & Jones, Engineering Materials 2, Elsevier, 2005 (3rd ed.).

Odpm & Cabe, Better Places to Work, Thomas Telford, 2005 (1st ed.).

Houghton & Carpenter, Aerodynamics for Engineering Students, Elsevier, 2003 (5th ed.).

Larsen & Tyas, Conceptual Structural Design, Thomas Telford, 2003 (1st ed.).

MacLeod, Modern Structural Analysis, Thomas Telford, 2005 (1st ed.).

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Megson, Structural and Stress Analysis, Elsevier, 2005 (2nd ed.).

Morris, Measurement and Instrumentation Principles, Elsevier, 2001 (3rd ed.).

Odpm & Cabe, Better Places to Live, Thomas Telford, 2001 (1st ed.).

Richardson & Harker, Chemical Engineering Volume 2, Elsevier, 2002 (5th ed.).

Simons & Menzies, A Short Course in Foundation Engineering, Thomas Telford, 2000 (2nd ed.).

Simons, Menzies & Matthews, A Short Course in Soil and Rock Slope Engineering, Thomas Telford, 2001 (1st ed.). th Sinnott, Chemical Engineering Volume 6: Chemical Engineering Design, Elsevier, 2005 (4 ed.).

Tse & Viswanath, Fundamentals of Wireless Communication, Cambridge University Press, 2005 (1st ed.).

Media studies (7) Curran & Seaton, Power without Responsibility, Taylor & Francis, 2003 (6th ed.).

Gauntlett, Media, Gender and Identity, Taylor & Francis, 2002 (1st ed.)

Hayward, Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts, Taylor & Francis, 2006 (3rd ed.).

Hicks, English for Journalists, Taylor & Francis, 2006 (3rd ed.).

Hicks, Adams & Gilbert, Writing for Journalists, Taylor & Francis, 1999 (1st ed.).

Lacey, Media, Institutions and Audiences, Palgrave, 2002 (1st ed.).

Theaker, Public Relations Handbook, Taylor & Francis, 2004 (2nd ed.).

The transactional logs supplied were compiled from datasets stored at MyiLibrary. The following box provides an example of a line from the transactional server log file.

2007-12-01 04:33:38 GET /browse/open.asp - 139.184.30.131 HTTP/1.0 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows;+U;+Windows+NT+6.0;+fr;+rv:1.8.1.11)+Gecko/200 71127+Firefox/2.0.0.11 http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/resources/ebooks.php www.myilibrary.com The first field furnishes the date stamp of when the file was sent to the user’s computer.

The next field describes the type of page; here /browse/open.asp refers to the home page. The field following is the IP (Internet Protocol) number, which is a numeric address that is provided to users connected to the Internet. The numbers were processed and the Domain Name Server or registered details of the corresponding IP was looked up via a reverse DNS lookup procedure. DNS registration provides categories for organizations to register under, thus: .ac for academic organizations.

“Mozilla/5.0+(Windows;+U;+Windows+NT+6.0;+fr;+rv:1.8.1.11)+Gecko/20071127+Firefo x/2.0.0.11” identifies the type of browser of the client machine. The field http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/resources/ebooks.php is the referrer field and gives the web site and page details of the previous page viewed by the user. In this case this was a library web page of e-book links at the University of Sussex. Finally the last element in the log refers to the MyiLibrary site 2.0 Working definitions Use. Three ‘use’ metrics were employed – number of pages viewed, number of sessions conducted and amount of time spent online (session length), in order to obtain more accurate estimates of e-book activity. For this analysis number of pages viewed was limited to book content use and includes views to book covers, book table of contents, foreword pages and content pages (the main pages of the e-book). Navigational and search page identifiers were not available and were thus not included. E-book content pages do not always equate with a print page (for example, an Oxford University Press

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e-book page is an HTML pages which is about 5 print pages) but in the case of MyiLibrary the e-book content page equates exactly with the print page.

Page view time is estimated by the difference in time between one page and the next page viewed. No figure is generated for the last page viewed in a session, because there is no log off recorded in the so an estimate has to be calculated. Session time includes page views of menus. Page view times and session times are not comparable to other CIBER e-book studies as the relatively short page view times and long session times of MyiLibrary titles reflects the fact that each page of the e-book has to be viewed to examine content. In these circumstances the number of sessions is a better metric if attempting to compare different e-book platforms.

Users. The users were individual universities and there was a need to identify use emanating from specific UK universities. UK universities were identified by IP range(s) of each university largely provided by JISC. E-book identification. E-books were identified by a reference number given in the transactional log files and this enabled JISC e-books to be identified. E-book titles and subject identifiers were not available for non-JISC e-books so only general comparisons are made with these e-books and the JISC e-books.

3.0 Results The following characteristics of e-book use and information seeking behaviour have been assessed in this section: 1. Use (as defined by page views, number sessions undertaken and time online) by day, month, day of the week and time of day. Analysis is provided for all universities and selectively for individual universities.

2. Information seeking behaviour a. ‘Busyness’ (number of views in a session) b. Type of content viewed c. Searching (use of internal search engine) d. Method of access (referrer link; restricted analysis) e. Location of use (on/off campus) f. Titles viewed g. Subjects viewed 3. Type and individual university analysis 4. Case study analysis (a number of universities were examined in detail and questionnaire data related to the usage data) Within most of the above analyses a comparison has been made between JISC e-book and the non JISC e-books used during the survey period by the participating universities in order to determine whether the JISC e-books, which were all course text e-books (rather than generic reference e-books) were used differently; they were a ‘control’ group.

3.1 Use There is no single ‘right’ or ‘accurate’ measure of use and a variety of metrics have been utilised to provide a comprehensive and robust picture for e-books: 1) page views, which CIBER at University College London, page 15 of 60

is a general, straightforward, but relatively crude activity indicator covering views to content pages; 2) sessions or visits conducted, the vehicle for information seeking behaviour analyses; 3) time spent online, either viewing a page or on a session, that provide an interesting metric.

During the period November 2007 to December 2008 across 127 universities nearly 800,000 pages of the JISC e-books were viewed, which meant, on average, there were 18,796 pages (cover, foreword, table of contents and text) views per title (Table 2). In addition, over 46,200 sessions were conducted where JISC e-books were viewed.

Sessions lasted on average around 13 minutes and on average about 8 pages were viewed. In comparison with the non JISC e-books, the JISC e-books attracted less use (18,796 compared to 20,132), recorded shorter page view times (22.8 to 28.1 seconds), saw marginally fewer content pages viewed in a session (7.9 as opposed to 8.6) and recorded much shorter session times (13.7 compared to 17.7 minutes). Nearly 4% of the sessions conducted viewed both JISC and non-JISC books and these sessions lasted around 36 minutes, a very long time in online terms; these users were either what we term persistent (heavy and regular) users rather than bouncers (light and irregular users) or they were searching on subject rather than title. These sessions inevitably viewed more titles because there were more books to view. Of the total of 10,026 e-books used on the MyiLibrary platform, the JISC e-books made up just 2.6% of the total collection therefore 46,263 sessions (compared to 416,907 sessions to the non JISC e-books) represents about 11.5% of all sessions, which is a good performance on the part of the JISC e-books.

Comparisons of course have to be made with caution for while all 127 universities had free access to the JISC e-books they did not all have access to the 10,000 or so non JISC e-books. This is because only some of the 127 universities had active subscriptions to MyiLibrary throughout the term of the study.

Table 2. Summary usage metrics for JISC and non JISC e-books

Total number of pages viewed* Page views per title** No of books in top 10 Page view time (seconds)*** No of sessions Page viewed in a session*** Session view time (minutes)

JISC e-books N % 761,352 13.2%

Non JISC e-books N % 5,022,454 86.8%

18,796

20,132

7

3

22.8

28.1

46,263 7.9 13.7

11.5

416,907 8.6 17.7

84.9

Viewing both N %

18,162 12.8

3.7%

36.5

* There were 26 titles in the JISC e-book collection and 10,000 titles in the non JISC e-book collection ** Top 26 titles only – the top 26 non JISC e-books were also used to present a comparison *** 5% trimmed mean

CIBER at University College London, page 16 of 60

Table 3 gives various averages for page view time broken down by type of e-book (JISC and non JISC). Using the 5% trimmed shows that the JISC e-books recorded a shorter page view time of about 6 seconds as compared to non JISC e-books, respectively, 22.8 seconds and 28.1 seconds (5% trimmed mean). The median gives the value of middle number in a rank order of numbers and estimates page view time at about 10 seconds.

The high arithmetic mean (209 and 197 seconds) compared to the median indicates that this data set is highly skewed.

Table 3. Page view time (measures of central tendency) Measure JISC e-books non JISC e-books Mean 209.1 197.1 Median 9.0 10.0 5% trimmed 22.8 28.1 Huber’s m-estimator 10.9 11.9 Figure 2 groups page view times and two groups stand out. Just under a third of pages were viewed for less than 5 seconds (28% non-JISC, 31% JISC) and well over a third of pages were viewed for more than 10 second but less than a minute (38% and 37%).

Pages of books are relatively short (compared to journal articles for example) and can certainly be navigated and power browsed in less than a minute and in more than 10 seconds. Those users viewing pages in fewer than 5 seconds may be sending the page to a printer or flicking through it; they are highly unlikely to be reading the content on the screen in real-time. They may, of course, also have been disinterested or arrived by mistake. About 15% of users and 17% in the case of non JISC e-books took over a minute to read a page.

Figure 2. Page view time (grouped) for JISC e-books and non JISC e-books 100

6

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38

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50 40

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CIBER at University College London, page 17 of 60

JISC

3.1.1 Daily use 3.1.1.1 Page views Figure 3 gives the daily usage for the 26 JISC e-books and shows it to be volatile. On average over the survey period about 2000 (1,835) page views were made per day to the JISC e-books. The highest number of daily views was made on the 19th and 18th of November 2008; views on these days totalled 6,730 and 5,605, more than three times the average daily rate. Unsurprisingly, low use was recorded during the vacations, on 30 August 2008, just 39 views were made, and 26 December 2008 the figure was 91. There appears to be a general pattern corresponding to the academic timetable in so much as use dips in the winter, Easter and summer breaks. The fall off in the summer vacation months, June to August, is very marked. Course text e-book use, as expected but clearly demonstrated here, is very much tied to the working week and teaching terms. This pattern of use over the year is very similar to other academic (journal and e-book) studies conducted by CIBER that is generally low use in the summer break, average use recorded during the winter and spring semesters and higher than average use recorded in the autumn semester. However, the high peaks and low troughs are more evident with the JISC e-books, clearly demonstrating the flux in demand for course text e-books in line with teaching and learning timetables.

Figure 3. Number of page views by day (Nov 2007 to Dec 2008) -JISC e-books 8000

6000

4000

2000

0

8 -0 EC 8 -D -0 16 OV 8 -N -0 25 OV 8 -N -0 04 CT 8 -O -0 14 E P 8 -S -0 23 E P 8 -S -0 02 UG 8 -A -0 12 UL -J -08 22 UL 8 -J -0 01 UN 8 -J -0 10 AY 8 -M -0 20 P R 8 -A -0 29 P R 8 -A -0 08 AR 8 -M -0 18 EB 8 -F -0 26 EB 8 -F -0 05 A N 7 -J -0 15 EC 7 -D -0 25 EC 7 -D -0 04 OV -N 13

Figure 4 gives the frequency of page views by day for non JISC e-books. On average over the period there were about 12,000 (12,102) views made per day. The highest CIBER at University College London, page 18 of 60

number of daily views were made on the 3rd and 17th of November 2008 (respectively 39,398,209 and 38,798). Low usage was recorded on the 24th October (956) and the 26th of December 2008 (1268). Again there was a general pattern corresponding to the academic timetable and use dipped at the Easter and summer breaks. Generally use during the last quarter, the autumn semester, was higher than use recorded in the winter and spring semesters. These figures confirm what has previously been suggested in CIBER studies, that e-books are used at the times that libraries have long experienced their greatest demands in regard to hard copy titles.

Figure 4. Number of page views by day (Nov 2007 to Dec 2008) – non-JISC e-books

50000

40000

30000

20000

10000

0

8 -0 C E 8 -D V -0 16 O 8 -N V -0 25 O 8 -N T-0 04 C 8 -O -0 14 E P 8 -S -0 23 E P 8 -S -0 02 UG 8 -A -0 12 UL 8 -J -0 22 UL 8 -J -0 01 UN 8 -J Y -0 10 A 8 -M -0 20 P R 8 -A -0 29 P R 8 0 - A R08 A 8 -M -0 18 EB 8 -F -0 26 EB 8 -F -0 05 A N 7 -J -0 15 EC 7 -D -0 25 EC 7 -D V -0 04 O -N 13

Figure 5 gives the comparative distribution of page views over the period for JISC and non-JISC e-books. (The total page views to both JISC and non JISC e-books have been summed and the percentage of page views to each collection calculated.) The Figure shows that the JISC e-book use was stronger in the January to May 2008 period compared to non JISC e-books, where the reverse was true in the September to December 2008 period. This difference could be a function of subject make-up of the two populations or due to modular courses for example; the non JISC population is much more subject diverse.

CIBER at University College London, page 19 of 60

Figure 5. Percentage page views by day (Nov 2007 to Dec 2008) for JISC and non JISC ebooks 1.0

.8

.6

.4

Ebooks

.2

Non-JIS C JI SC

0.0

8 -0 C E 8 -D V -0 16 O 8 -N V -0 25 O 8 -N T-0 04 C 8 -O -0 14 E P 8 -S -0 23 E P 8 -S -0 02 UG 8 -A -0 12 UL 8 -J -0 22 UL 8 -J -0 01 UN 8 -J Y -0 10 A 8 -M -0 20 P R 8 -A -0 29 P R 8 0 - A R08 A 8 -M -0 18 EB 8 -F -0 26 EB 8 -F -0 05 A N 7 -J -0 15 EC 7 -D -0 25 EC 7 -D V -0 04 O -N 13

3.1.1.2 Sessions Figure 6 shows the daily number of sessions viewing JISC e-books for the year. The average number of sessions viewing JISC e-books was under 200 (179) per day, probably not a lot of sessions when these figures are run out to more than a hundred universities. The distribution of JISC sessions is similar to the distribution of page views and would be expected.

Figure 6. Number of sessions by day (Nov2007 to Dec 2008) – JISC e-books 700

600

500

400 300

200

100 0

8 -0 C E 8 -D -0 16 OV 8 -N -0 25 OV 8 -N T-0 04 C 8 -O -0 14 E P 8 -S -0 23 E P 8 -S -0 02 UG 8 -A -0 12 UL -J -08 22 UL 8 -J -0 01 UN 8 -J -0 10 AY 8 -M -0 20 P R 8 -A -0 29 P R 8 -A -0 08 AR 8 -M -0 18 EB 8 -F -0 26 EB 8 -F -0 05 A N 7 -J -0 15 EC 7 -D -0 25 EC 7 -D -0 04 OV -N 13

CIBER at University College London, page 20 of 60

3.1.1.3 Time online Figure 7 gives the daily median page view time for the JISC e-books. There are clearly some marked variations and some of which can be explained by the teaching timetable (e.g. the peak in October coincides with the highest number of page views). Further research is required here.

Figure 7. Daily median page view time (seconds) for JISC e-books 30

20

10

0

8 -0 C E 8 -D -0 16 OV 8 -N -0 25 OV 8 -N -0 04 CT 8 -O -0 14 E P 8 -S -0 23 E P 8 -S -0 02 UG -A -08 12 UL -J -08 22 UL 8 -J -0 01 UN 8 -J -0 10 AY 8 -M -0 20 P R 8 -A -0 29 P R 8 -A -0 08 AR 8 -M -0 18 EB 8 -F 0 26 EB 8 -F -0 05 A N 7 -J -0 15 EC 7 -D -0 25 EC 7 -D -0 04 OV -N 13

3.1.2 Monthly use 3.1.2.1 Page views Figure 8 gives the daily average (mean) use by month. High average use occurred in November 2008 (3,835) while July 08 (500) recorded the lowest use. February 2008 recorded the second highest (2,653) average daily use figures.

CIBER at University College London, page 21 of 60

Figure 8. Average (mean) use per day by month – JISC e-books 5000

4000 3835

3000 2653 2290

2000

2632

2505 2237

2416

1933 1372

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500

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0 NOV 07

JAN 08

DEC 07

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FEB 08

MAY 08

APR 08

JUL 08

JUN 08

SEP 08

AUG 08

NOV 08

OCT 08

DEC 08

Figure 9 gives the percentage share of use broken down by JISC and non-JISC e-books by month. While JISC e-books made up 21% of all e-book usage in February, which is very good when you think only 26 titles were involved, their proportion of use fell to just half of that (9%) by October 2008.

Figure 9. Percentage use share for JISC and non JISC e-books by month 100 90 80

10

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90 84

81

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Ebooks

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JISC Non-JISC

0 NOV 07 JAN 08 MAR 08 MAY 08

JUL 08

SEP 08 NOV 08

DEC 07 FEB 08 APR 08 JUN 08 AUG 08 OCT 08 DEC 08

CIBER at University College London, page 22 of 60

Figure 10 gives a different take on the comparison by providing the total use for each month broken down by category of e-book (JISC and non JISC).

Figure 10. Sum of page views per month – broken down for JISC and non JISC e-books 100000 0

800000

600000

400000

Ebooks

200000

Non-JISC 0

JI SC

08 C E D 08 V O N 08 T C O 08 P E S 08 G U A 8 0 L JU 8 0 N JU 08 Y A M 08 R P A 08 R A M 8 0 B E F 08 N JA 07 C E D 07 V O

N

There are a number of possible reasons for the relative fall in use of JISC e-books over the period: 1. They are (more) semester sensitive and most use occurred earlier in the academic year when the relevant modules were run; 2. In the January/February period CIBER released an online questionnaire. This questionnaire was well publicised and alerted academics to the presence of JISC e-books and this resulted in an increased usage of these titles over and around the survey period.

3. In previous studies CIBER has found that there is an increase in use just after service inception but that use then falls off and stabilises. This may be happening here.

4. Universities increased their purchase of MyiLibrary stock (the JISC agreement may have increased awareness of other titles available) and this resulted in greater and better choice (more recent titles, for instance) and usage of Non JISC e-books in the second half of the period and a decline in JISC e-book usage.

3.1.2.2 Sessions Figure 11 shows the split between sessions that just viewed non JISC e-books, just JISC e-books, and those that viewed both. In February sessions viewing JISC e-books reached a high of 22% (19% for JISC only sessions and 3% viewing both) thereafter the percentage share of sessions viewing JISC e-books fell and by September 2008 this figure had fallen to just 10%. This is a very similar figure to what we found for page views.

CIBER at University College London, page 23 of 60

Figure 11. Percentage session share by JISC and non JISC e-books by month 100 9 90

14 16 19 16 14 14 15 11 12

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81 82 82 81

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Non-JISC only

08 EC D 08 V O N 08 T C O 08 P SE 08 G AU 8 0 L JU 8 0 N JU 08 Y A M 08 R AP 08 R A M 08 B FE 8 0 N JA 7 0 EC 7 0 V O

N

D

3.1.2.3 Time online The median page view time for JISC and Non-JISC e-books by month was relatively stable, with an increase in viewing time of Non JISC e-books in November/December 2008 and a slight drop in JISC e-book reading times in March 2008. The increases and decreases amount to just a second, but this does represent a difference of about 10%

CIBER at University College London, page 24 of 60

Figure 12. Page view time in seconds for JISC and non JISC e-books, by month 12 11 11 10

10

10 10 9

9

8

9

10 10

10 10

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9 8

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1010

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Non-JISC JISC

0 NOV 07 JAN 08 MAR 08 MAY 08 JUL 08

SEP 08 NOV 08

DEC 07 FEB 08 APR 08 JUN 08 AUG 08 OCT 08 DEC 08

3.1.3 Day of the week use 3.1.3.1 Page views Figure 13 gives the use distribution over day of week for JISC e-books. Use was extremely level throughout the first four days of the working week (averaging 17% each day), then dropped off significantly on Fridays (12%) and then held up reasonably well over the weekend at about 10%. The distribution was very similar for non-JISC e-books.

CIBER at University College London, page 25 of 60

Figure 13. Percentage distribution of use over week JISC e-books 20

17

17

17

17

15

12 10

11 9

5

0 SUN

MON

TUE

WED

THU

FRI

SAT

In general JISC e-books made up 13 to 14% of e-book use over the week and this was consistent over the day.

3.1.3.2 Session time On average e-books were viewed for longer at the weekend but not by much, just a second. The most notable differences in times were in the percentage of very short sessions – during the week 32% were under 5 seconds, while on a weekend the equivalent figure was 28%. We might have expected e-book use to be slightly more leisurely in the comfort of the home.

3.1.4 Hour of the day use The percentage use share distribution over hour of day for JISC and non JISC e-books was very similar, suggesting a standard form of e-book behaviour. The low point in use occurred at about 5am in the morning, thereafter use increased climbing to a peak around lunch time – 9% of daily use occurred during the 1pm slot - after that it fell at first steeply between 1pm to 5pm and then less steeply between 5pm to 10pm. Just over a quarter (26.2%) of use occurred after 6pm and before 8am.

CIBER at University College London, page 26 of 60

Figure 14. Percentage use share distribution over hour of day for JISC and non JISC e-books 10

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Ebooks

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Non-JISC JI SC

0 0

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3.1.5 University analysis The following list gives usage by university based on the IP range(s) of each university as supplied by JISC and the Domain Name Service register. The top five universities by JISC e-book usage were: Sheffield Hallam University, University of Sheffield, University of Glamorgan, University of Birmingham and the University of Nottingham. The five universities which increased their rank position most when Non JISC and JISC e-book usage are compared were: University of Hertfordshire (ranked 107 for non JISC e-book use, ranked 15 for JISC e-book use), University of Newcastle Upon Tyne (125 and 37), Liverpool John Moores University (101 and 26), University of Exeter (84 and 11) and Aberystwyth University (102 and 29). These are huge movements and it would be good to establish why this happened in these universities, was it for example a result of publicity? The five worst performing universities were London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (34 down to 123), Birkbeck College University of London (44 to 127), Bishop Grosseleste University College Lincoln (47 to 125 a fall of 78 places), University of Lincoln (8 to 83) and University of Brighton (rank 14 for Non-JISC use to rank 88 for JISC usage). This might well have been to do with the (lack of) subject relevance of the JISC e-books for these universities.

COUNTER compliant data was also obtained from MyiLibrary. According to COUNTER statistics from January 2009 to December 2008 the 5 universities with the highest successful section requests were: University of Sheffield, University of Loughborough, University of Nottingham, Robert Gordon University and Manchester Metropolitan University. Just two of these universities feature in the deep log top 5. The differences in the top 5 point to the problems in collecting and interpreting usage data, for example the issue of double clicks can increase the statistics.

CIBER at University College London, page 27 of 60

Table 4. Universities ranked by total successful section requests January 2008 – December 2008 1 Non-JISC e-book JISC e-books Rank Rank by by usage usage where where 1 is 1 is Usage highest Usage highest Sheffield Hallam University 21468 39 17602 1 University of Sheffield 37303 25 16784 2 University of Glamorgan 70172 12 15488 3 University of Birmingham 5739 64 13632 4 University of Nottingham 18560 40 10915 5 Cambridge University 234955 1 10594 6 Brunel University 18324 41 10535 7 University of Bath 156726 4 10527 8 Lancaster University 54695 16 10200 9 The University of Warwick 4074 72 9973 10 University of Exeter 926 84 9445 11 Imperial College London 25905 32 9183 12 University of Leeds 51174 20 8939 13 University of Liverpool 8324 57 8880 14 University of Hertfordshire 66 107 8471 15 London Metropolitan University 176657 3 8443 16 University of Strathclyde 54613 17 7727 17 Loughborough University 457 89 7703 18 London South Bank University 45978 24 7664 19 University of Surrey 22772 36 7082 20 Cranfield University 2033 77 7074 21 Manchester Metropolitan University 13556 50 6884 22 University of London (Library) 971 83 6512 23 University of the Arts, London 227 95 6348 24 University of Hull 22008 38 6285 25 Liverpool John Moores University 140 101 6105 26 University of Portsmouth 47737 23 5919 27 Coventry University 52316 18 5564 28 Aberystwyth University 127 102 5532 29 University of Bristol 13775 48 5188 30 Napier University 75376 11 5071 31 Leeds Metropolitan University 187 97 4784 32 Cardiff University 78748 10 4772 33 City University 52182 19 4675 34 Robert Gordon University 127817 6 4576 35 Kings College London 26174 31 4570 36 1

Numbers exceed 127 because The University of London has a number of component colleges or facilities for which data are provided and also there are university partnerships listed also

CIBER at University College London, page 28 of 60

University of Newcastle Upon Tyne Durham University Queens University Belfast London School of Economics and Political Science Queen Mary University London University of Aberdeen University of St Andrews University of Westminster University of Southampton University of Glasgow University of Sussex University of Stirling Royal Holloway University of London University of the West of England Heriot-Watt University Swansea University Bournemouth University University of Wolverhampton Bangor University University of Bradford University of Edinburgh University of Worcester Edge Hill University University of Central Lancashire University College London Northumbria University Oxford Brookes University Glasgow Caledonian University De Montfort University University of Greenwich University of Gloucestershire University of Reading University of East London University Campus Suffolk Aston University Kingston University University of Leicester Birmingham City University University of Salford University College Falmouth Swansea Metropolitan University Newman University College, Birmingham Roehampton University University of Wales Institute, Cardiff Thames Valley University University of Teesside University of Lincoln CIBER at University College London, page 29 of 60

7 50175 30601

125 21 27

4570 4529 4486

37 38 39

212845 4580 151 151486 247 13723 28399 11148 29882 26485 45 96 1993 31076 79329 23 1803 69878 13302 23885 7647 18060 7657 59206 15780 4091 82592 48916 309 7134 9248 1546 16638 4525 14556 5998 34 16 27 200 21 4052 21 79758

2 67 100 5 94 49 29 52 28 30 110 106 78 26 9 116 80 13 51 33 59 42 58 15 45 70 7 22 93 61 55 81 43 68 46 63 112 121 114 96 117 73 118 8

4426 4406 4315 4246 4214 4175 4023 4022 3803 3792 3709 3620 3584 3554 3468 3362 3352 3212 3085 3044 2998 2892 2860 2680 2550 2507 2421 2391 2348 2310 2247 2129 2049 1957 1873 1866 1854 1733 1705 1691 1682 1642 1608 1573

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

St Marys College (Twickenham) University of Manchester Universities at Medway (Consortium of Kent, Greenwich and Canterbury Christ Church) Glasgow School of Art University of Brighton Nottingham Trent University School of Oriental and African Studies UHI Millennium Institute University of Bolton Glyndwr University University of Huddersfield University of Derby University of East Anglia Bath Spa University Southampton Solent University Keele University University of York University of Chester University of Wales, Newport Edinburgh College of Art University of Northampton University of Sunderland University of London Halls Middlesex University University of the West of Scotland University College Plymouth St Mark & St John Trinity College Carmarthen Liverpool Hope University York St John University University of Wales, Lampeter Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts Buckinghamshire New University Worcester College of Technology Staffordshire University University of Cumbria Royal College of Music University of Oxford University of Ulster University of Abertay, Dundee London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine The School of Pharmacy, University of London Bishop Grosseleste University College Lincoln CIBER at University College London, page 30 of 60

40 3035

111 75

1559 1533

84 85

10310 103 59357 4107 17 22092 4079 17 5648 557 23250 109 4747 8885 7373 2511 3783 0 14 1330 6987 57 421

53 104 14 69 119 37 71 120 65 87 35 103 66 56 60 76 74 129 122 82 62 108 90

1519 1489 1289 1279 1225 1201 1166 1163 1143 1047 1045 1030 957 942 874 814 770 760 752 740 729 722 641

86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108

370 34 14 470 4 0 27 911 47 185 0 356 9485 1810

91 113 123 88 127 130 115 85 109 98 131 92 54 79

636 636 572 568 524 483 412 353 343 324 296 280 222 216

109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

23773

34

185

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86

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14547

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Leeds College of Music Birkbeck College University of London London Business School University of London (other) Scottish Agricultural College University of Dundee Goldsmiths, University of London

0 16208 9 3 0 97 157

132 44 124 128 133 105 99

83 73 58 16 15 13 10

126 127 128 129 131 132 133

The top ten universities by usage accounted for over a quarter (26.7%) of JISC e-book usage. The top twenty universities account for under a half (44.3%) of all JISC e-book use. Half of all usage of the JISC e-books was undertaken by the top 24 universities.

3.2 Information Seeking (session data) 3.2.1 Site busyness Figure 15 gives the number of actual content page views in a session broken down into those viewing JISC e-books, non JISC e-books and those viewing both. The percentage share distribution of the number of views in a session was similar for the non-JISC and JISC e-book sessions. That is over a third of sessions (40%) viewed three content pages or less, about a third of sessions viewed between 4 to 10 pages and third of sessions viewed more than ten content pages (the later figure constitutes relatively high levels of digital viewing compared to e-journal viewing). The biggest difference was in those sessions viewing both JISC and non-JISC e-books where a half (52%) viewed 11 or more pages in a session compared to just 30% for JISC and non JISC e-books.

Therefore, sessions that viewed both JISC and non JISC e-books viewed more content pages. These sessions were probably conducted by serious or persistent users or those seeking subjects rather than individual titles.

In terms of the average number of pages viewed in a session it was 7.5 for JISC e-books and 7.1 for non JISC e-books, (a reversal of the general trend seen so far), while for sessions viewing both JISC and Non-JISC e-books the figure was 16 pages.

CIBER at University College London, page 31 of 60

Figure 15. Percentage session share of content views for JIC and non JISC e-books

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The absolute numbers of book views in a session were split into two groupings: those sessions viewing just one title in a session and those viewing more than one title in a session. About one in ten sessions (9%) that just viewed JISC e-book content pages viewed more than one title in a session and this compared to about a quarter of sessions (25%) that did so for sessions viewing non-JISC e-books. This means that most of the JISC e-book sessions (81%) viewed only one title but viewed the same percentage of pages as the non JISC e-books.

For example, 81% of users of the JISC e-books viewed just one e-book with the majority viewing 4-10 pages in that one e-book where as only 75% of users of the non JISC ebooks viewed just one e-book with the majority viewing 4-10 pages. This could suggest that users of the JISC e-books were more focused in their activity not needing to look at as many e-books as the JISC e-books were course texts that students are supposed to read or consult as part of their course. Thus students were focused in accessing the ebook they required and the pages that they required. This is just one hypothesis.

3.2.2 Content viewed Most views, nearly three quarters (70%), were to text pages, 15% were to foreword pages, 4% were to cover pages and about one in ten (11%) of views were to the Table of Contents (ToC). The figures for the latter are probably under-recording their use because when you are viewing a MyiLibrary content page, the ToC is always visible in a separate pane occupying the left 25% of the screen.

Figure 16 shows the time spent viewing different types of pages. In terms of page view time, unsurprisingly perhaps, foreword pages were viewed for the least amount of time half were viewed for less than 5 seconds. Interestingly, although a very small percentage CIBER at University College London, page 32 of 60

of views were in the 3 – 5 minutes range, where pages were viewed for 3 – 5 minutes, it is the content pages that receive the highest amount of views. This could be an indicative of the small percentage of users that do read online. Most views to content pages happen in the 10 seconds to 1 minute category; in fact most activity is in this category, consistent with the findings in Figure 2. Cover pages unexpectedly were viewed for the longest time and perhaps this is due to users becoming distracted by other activities that cause them to leave the MyiLibrary platform such as Facebook, and never log off that cover page. The distribution of page view time and type of page is similar the non JISC e-books.

Overall, these figures show that a higher proportion of users spend time on the foreword, ToC and cover than they do on actual content pages. Does this indicate that users are not using the searching functionality – still preferring to navigate through the traditional way of the table of contents and browsing the foreword to see which chapters are relevant to them or does it indicate that users struggle to navigate the MyiLibrary platform, spending more time on navigational pages than on the content pages, which when they do reach, are printed out or sections copied into other documents?

Figure 16. View time by page type

View time by page type 60 50 40

Cover ToC

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Foreward Content Page

20 10 0 0-5 5 - 10 10 1-3 seconds seconds seconds minutes to 1 minute

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3.2.3 Searching (Use of the MyiLibrary search facility) A low amount, approximately one in ten (9%) of all sessions (viewing JISC e-books, non JISC e-books and both) saw the search facility being utilised. Sessions viewing JISC ebooks were more likely to have used the search: 11% compared to 8% for non JISC ebooks. Those viewing both were also more like to employ search, 20% did so and this seems logical with a larger amount of e-books to discover from. This latter might well be CIBER at University College London, page 33 of 60

explained by the fact that those viewing both were more persistent users or engaged on more substantial searches.

Those sessions using the search facility were twice as likely to view more than one ebook in a session compared to those sessions that did not use the search facility: 42% compared to 23%. We have found this to be true elsewhere; search engines increase the degree of usage.

Those using the search facility were not only likely to view more than one e-book in a session they were also more likely to view more content pages in a session. Of course the two go hand in hand. Thus those sessions using a search facility were more likely to view over 20 pages in a session about a quarter did so as compared to 17% of sessions that did not use the search facility.

Table 5 gives an idea of the search terms used when searching for all e-books on the MyiLibrary platform and gives the top 20 search expressions. The top twenty accounted for less than 10% of all search terms and the frequency distribution of search expressions was not concentrated, perhaps, not surprisingly given the encyclopaedic nature of MyiLibrary content. Many of the top twenty were business related terms including “marketing” and “management” which occupied the top two places. This confirms the general popularity of business e-books as demonstrated later, although of course we are only talking about 9% of sessions which employ search Author names also appear in this list (e.g. Mullins, Hannegan) Table 5. Top 20 search expressions Search expression N marketing 569 management 470 biomechanics 441 mullins 306 human+resource+management 304 leadership 298 operations+management 287 organisational+behaviour 283 corporate+strategy 276 verbeek+guide+econometrics 230 hannagan 225 motivation 221 research+methods 218 research 209 essentials+of+marketing 209 project+management 194 midwifery 193 accounting 185 consumer+behaviour 184 business 175

% 0.7 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.2 0.2 7.4

Interestingly, sessions viewing a JISC e-book business title were about twice as likely to have used a search expression, 18% did so, compared to media studies (9%) or CIBER at University College London, page 34 of 60

engineering (9%). This partly explains the popularity of business terms across the whole site, but may also be indicative of a subject behavioural difference.

Whether the user was based on campus or not impacted on the likelihood of using the search facility. Sessions originating from the campus were less likely to use the search facility about 8% did so compared to 20% of UK off campus and a third (33%) of overseas users. This again, could link to subject behaviours, with a higher proportion of business and management courses being offered to distance, part time or overseas students than engineering and media studies courses (whose students, as you will see later, prefer to use e-books on campus).

Overall, the low use of the search facility on the MyiLibrary platform indicates that users do not favour this functionality to navigate to e-books or to find e-books on the platform.

3.2.4 Access methods The referrer link of the log provides an indication of where the user came from before they arrived on the MyiLibrary platform and this with further research tells us something about the method of discovery and provides a broader understanding of the information need that triggered the search. This is not an exact science though, and this is especially true in the case of e-books, as universities in the UK use a wide (and confusing) variety of methods to provide access and encourage access to e-resources which means, for instance, it is not always possible to identify whether the URL refers to the catalogue, a library webpage or a VLE. Furthermore, some institutions may block referrer link information appearing in a log file or use proxy servers which distort the link. It should be noted that MyiLibrary e-books are not indexed by Google and thus users are extremely unlikely to come in from a search engine.

CIBER at University College London, page 35 of 60

Figure 17. Referrer links to the JISC e-books

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Although 44% of the referrer links to the JISC e-books were not identifiable for the reasons mentioned above (Figure 17) an analysis of the remaining 56% was possible and with over 127 universities involved, this provides a reasonably clear representation of how users access the MyiLibrary platform. In addition, the referrer links to the non JISC e-books show very similar results.

An analysis of the links that were identifiable in Figure 18 (the 56% as mentioned above) shows that that the library plays the central role in discovery of e-books; 37% of referrer links clearly identified the catalogue or a catalogue / LMS system and 61% of referrer links were ‘library links’ that could have been from the catalogue but were not identifiable but certainly came from the library. In addition, the referrer links to the non JISC e-books show very similar results.

CIBER at University College London, page 36 of 60

Figure 18. Identifiable referrer links to the JISC e-books

Identifiable referrer links to the JISC e-books. Percentage of total visits

VLE's 2% Library links 37% Library catalogue systems 61%

The log data was able to identify some links that referred exclusively to a VLE system; however this was less than 1% (2% in Figure 18). This is perhaps surprising considering the high level of VLE use in universities but may also just be an indication of the difficulties in identifying referrer links or the lack of join up between the VLE and the library.

From an analysis of the VLE referrer links to the JISC e-books that were identified the following findings are particularly significant: 1. Although only 1% of links were identifiable as coming via a VLE, the results indicate that user coming in via a VLE are more likely to view more than 20 pages of an e-book and to spend longer sessions viewing e-books. This indicates that VLE’s may drive usage up.

2. The use of the VLEs increased steeply from September 2008 to a peak in October 2008, this might be because of inductions and the start of the new academic year.

3. Business and management students used the VLE much more (305 sessions) than those in Engineering (74) and Media Studies (50). Again, this could relate to the nature of distance learning and overseas business courses.

In regard to the JISC e-books University Campus Suffolk users came in most frequently by a VLE. They were followed at some distance by Manchester Metropolitan University.

If we look at non JISC e-books then the University of St Andrews scores highly, just second to Suffolk.

CIBER at University College London, page 37 of 60

Table 6. Top ten universities using VLEs to access MyiLibrary titles JISC and non JISC enon JISC book e-book JISC e-book sessions Sessions Sessions 96 376 57 Univ Campus Suffolk Manchester 58 7 37 Metropolitan Univ Heriot-Watt Univ 23 1 1 22 0 15 Univ of Exeter Univ of St Andrews 13 368 6 10 0 1 Swansea Univ Trinity College 5 1 0 Carmarthen Bangor Univ 2 0 0 London South Bank 2 98 17 Univ UHI Millennium 2 137 4 Institute 3.2.5 Location This analysis, introduced earlier, identifies whether the member of staff or student viewed the JISC and non JISC e-books on or off-campus. The logs supplied by MyiLibrary included details of those people who had authenticated via IP / OpenAthens or Shibboleth and this helped us to identify whether they were off-campus IP’s or IP's outside the UK. Three groupings were used for the purpose of the analysis: • UK HE on campus– accesses made on campus at higher education institutions in the UK; • UK HE off-campus - accesses made off-campus in the UK by higher education users; • HE overseas- accesses made off-campus and abroad by higher education users.

About one in twenty (6%) page views were made off-campus and not in the UK by higher education users, about a third (32% for JISC e-books and 35% for non JISC ebooks) of views were made off-campus in the UK and about two-thirds (63% for JISC ebooks and 60% for non JISC e-books) were made on campus at higher education institutions in the UK. Roughly the same breakdown was found for sessions except that those viewing both JISC and non JISC e-books were more likely to do this on campus (Figure 17). About three quarters (74%) of those viewing both types of e-books did so on campus. Clearly persistent or subject users undertaking longer sessions investigating a number of ebooks in the same session seem to prefer to do this on-campus. It should be noted however that only about 3 % of sessions viewed both JISC and non-JISC e-books, so the figures are low.

CIBER at University College London, page 38 of 60

Figure 19. Location of access (percentage of sessions) Location of access to JISC e-books

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Off campus (including overseas) use was highest in March 2008 and June 2008, where it accounted for more than 40% of use and least in September 2008 when it fell to 25%.

This is another example of the importance of 24/7 online access during the peak teaching and revision months when students require constant access to their course texts. The drop in September 2008 is coupled with a high increase in on campus use, rising from 57% in March 2008, into the mid 60% in April and June and hitting a peak in September of 74%. This could be explained by the commencement of the academic year.

Off campus use of the JISC e-books increased by 12% on a weekend, however even so about half (50%) of weekend use was made on campus. However, not surprisingly, during the evenings and nights more e-book use took place off-campus than on despite the long opening hours most university libraries now have in place.

Figure 20. Percentage use by hour and location weekend JISC e-books 12

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CIBER at University College London, page 39 of 60

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In terms of time, well over a third (37%) of UK HE on campus sessions viewing JISC ebooks lasted over 30 minutes, compared to a quarter (25%) for off-campus sessions.

Users appear to spend considerably more time on e-books at their place of work or study.

3.2.6 Subject analysis Observing any behavioural differences by subject area was a central part of the Observatory project and given the great subject diversity that CIBER has encountered in its e-journal studies, this is clearly a key analysis. However to fully understand the data we need to bear in mind the subject distribution of the e-books (see Table 7).

Table 7. Number and percentage of JISC e-book collection by subject Subject Area No. of JISC e-books % of whole JISC e-book collection Engineering 14 53% Business and Management 5 19% Media Studies 7 26% Engineering, which made up about half (53%) of the JISC e-books, accounted for less than a quarter (22%) of usage, the five Business titles (19% of the JISC e-books) accounted for just under half (46%) of usage while the 7 Media studies titles (26% of the JISC e-books) accounted for about a third (31%) of usage. Clearly despite the small number of e-books, the business titles were the most popular.

Figure 21 gives the subject percentage share of JISC e-book by month. The analysis probably points to when specific courses in specific subject fields are taught and the book promoted via the learning/teaching activity.

• Use of the media studies e-books remained about a third (35%) in the first six months (November 2007 to April 2008) then fell, as a percentage share, to a quarter in the summer months, and only increased marginally during the autumn semester. The peak month was April 2008 where media studies took 39% of the subject share. The lowest percentage share was in August 2008 with just 22%.

• The business e-books performed better than the other subjects across the board but use was low between February 2008 and April 2008 accounting for just 40% of views, 6% below the average. The peak month was interestingly August 2008 with a 63% share, followed by May 2008 (52%) and November 2008 and January 2008 which both had a 49% share. These use of the business e-books in these 4 months accounted for about half of all views to the JISC e-books. The lowest percentage share was in April with just 35%. This is opposite to the use of the media studies e-books and again, could be explained by the high number of distance and part time learning business courses.

• The engineering titles overall did not perform well, but they did relatively well in the February 2008 reaching a peak share of 28%. The other month where the engineering titles did well was July 2008. The lowest percentage share was in August 2008 with just 15%.

CIBER at University College London, page 40 of 60

Figure 21. Percentage use share of subject by month – JISC ebooks 100

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With regard to page view time about half of users viewing the JISC media studies ebooks viewed pages for less than five seconds, a very high percentage. Business and engineering subjects saw considerably less users viewing pages for under 5 seconds (23% and 26%) and had a greater share of users viewing content between 10 seconds but under a minute (respectively, 42% and 41%).

CIBER at University College London, page 41 of 60

Figure 22. Percentage share distribution of page view time by subject 100 90

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In support of the percentage share of use section above, Figure 22 shows the percentage share of subject viewed by location and supports the assumption that a large proportion of business users, access e-books from off campus. Engineering users prefer to use the JISC e-books on campus (32% as opposed to 16% for off campus) and media studies users seem to use the e-books as much on campus (26%) as off campus (23%).

CIBER at University College London, page 42 of 60

Figure 23. Percentage share of subject viewed by location – sessions JISC ebooks 100

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In terms of text or content views in a session – a busyness metric, those users viewing a combination of subjects were, unsurprisingly, the busiest, with 46% of sessions seeing more than 11 pages viewed. In respect to the single subject visits, Media Studies had the busiest users, with 40% viewing more than 11 pages in a session.

CIBER at University College London, page 43 of 60

Figure 24. Percentage share of content views in a session across subject – sessions viewing JISC e-books 100

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Figure 25. Percentage share of session time (grouped) across subject – sessions viewing JISC e-books 100

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CIBER at University College London, page 44 of 60

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3.2.7 Individual Book title analysis Having examined subject diversity it is well worth exploring individual title diversity within the three subjects. There were 26 JISC e-books made available on the MyiLibrary platform. These e-books attracted about three quarters of a million (761,352) pages.

However, a relatively small number of titles accounted for the vast majority of use, and this is partly a function of the subject mix.

The rank order by usage of the 26 JISC e-books is given in Table 8. The most popular title was a business and management title, Organisational Behaviour and Analysis: An Integrated Approach and this title attracted 82,787 views over the period November 2007 to December 2008 and accounted for about 11% of views to the JISC e-books. In fact the top 5 titles each attracted more that 10% of overall use, so just 5 titles, about 20% of all titles accounted for over half of all use. Furthermore, the top ten titles account for 78% of JISC e-books usage.

Table 8. Rank order by usage of the 26 JISC e-books 2 N % Organisational Behaviour and Analysis: An Integrated Approach 82787 10.9 Media Gender and Identity 81205 10.7 Management Concepts & Practices 77746 10.2 Integrated Marketing Communication 77298 10.2 Marketing Strategy & Competitive Positioning 74018 9.7 Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts 62574 8.2 Power without Responsibility 42013 5.5 Chemical Engineering Volume 6: Chemical Engineering Design 36541 4.8 The Dynamics of Employee Relations 31833 4.2 Engineering Materials 1 27634 3.6 Public Relations Handbook 23584 3.1 Structural and Stress Analysis 18608 2.4 Chemical Engineering Volume 2 15112 2.0 Media Institutions and Audiences 14623 1.9 Measurement and Instrumentation Principles 13273 1.7 Aerodynamics for Engineering Students 12391 1.6 Engineering Materials 2 11319 1.5 English for Journalists 9676 1.3 Writing for Journalists 9620 1.3 Fundamentals of Wireless Communication 8883 1.2 Modern Structural Analysis 8264 1.1 A Short Course in Foundation Engineering 5725 0.8 Better Places to Live 5001 0.7 Conceptual Structural Design 4944 0.6 A Short Course in Soil and Rock Slope Engineering 3736 0.5 Better Places to Work 2944 0.4 Total 761352 100.0 2

This list differs slightly from the COUNTER figures, although the top ten are the same

CIBER at University College London, page 45 of 60

Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

The JISC e-book usage was compared to the usage of the on JISC e-books. Both the JISC and non JISCe-books were ranked and the first fifty were compared in groups of ten and the occurrences of JISC and non JISC e-books in each band were recorded. In the top ten, seven JISC e-books appeared, this is an extraordinary performance given that there were only 26 JISC e-books. In the group of ten (11 to 20 titles) the JISC ebooks accounted for 4 of the titles. Within the top 50 e-books by usage JISC e-books accounted for 16 (Table 9).

Table 9. Number of JISC e-books appearing in the top fifty of all e-book use, ranked in 10s All E-book titles ranked No of JISC enon JISC eby usage books books Top ten (1-10) 7 3 Next ten(11-20) 4 6 Next ten(21-30) 1 9 Next ten (31-40) 2 8 Next ten (41-50) 2 6 Top 50 titles by usage 16 34 3.2.7.1 Within subject use The following figures and tables provide a subject analysis of the individual e-books used. Table 10 shows the ranking for Media studies. Media, gender and Identity was the most popular title.

Table 10. Media Studies: individual title rankings Title Ranking according to % of total use (see usage (see Table 6) Table 6) Media, Gender and Identity 2 10.7 Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts 6 8.2 Power without Responsibility 7 5.5 Public Relations Handbook 11 3.1 Media Institutions and Audiences 14 1.9 English for Journalists 18 1.3 Writing for Journalists 19 1.3 Figure 26 examines the percentage share distribution of page view time by media studies e-book. The page view time of less than 5 seconds had the highest percentage share across the media studies titles. Two titles stand out - over half (56%) of page views to Cinema Studies were less than 5 seconds but only 22% of page views to Media, Institutions and Audiences were less than 5 seconds. This e-book was the exception to the general trend as the page view time that received the highest percentage share was 10 seconds to 1 minute (46%).

CIBER at University College London, page 46 of 60

Figure 26. Percentage share distribution of page view time by JISC Media Studies e-books 100

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Figure 27 lists the share of use for each Media Studies title by month. The book Media Gender and Identity (Rank 2 / most popular media studies title) doubled its share of usage from 22% in November 2007 to 41% in March and April it then halved during the summer months, only rising to the high 30s (37%) in December 2008. The book Cinema Studies (the second most popular media studies title) made up about a quarter of this subject’s usage (between 23% and 27%) over the period. Power without Responsibility made up more than a quarter (28%) of this subjects usage in October 2008, however usage varied significantly (10% to 27%) over the period.

Figure 27. Percentage use share of book viewed across month – Media Studies JISC e-books 100

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CIBER at University College London, page 47 of 60

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Key 1 Power without Responsibility 2 Media Gender and Identity 3 Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts 4 Public Relations Handbook 5 Writing for Journalists 6 English for Journalists 7 Media Institutions and Audiences

Table 11 provides the individual rankings for Business and Management books.

Table 11. Business and Management Studies: individual title rankings Title Ranking according % of total use (see to usage (see Table Table 6) 6) Organisational Behaviour and Analysis: An Integrated Approach 1 10.9 Management Concepts & Practices 3 10.2 Integrated Marketing Communication 4 10.2 Marketing Strategy & Competitive Positioning 5 9.7 The Dynamics of Employee Relations 9 4.2 Figure 28 gives the monthly percentage share use by title for each month for the Business and Management e-books. The book that attracted a significant growth in usage was Integrated Marketing Communication. The share of usage of this book increased from 14% in December 2007 to 38% in May 2008. Use was fairly varied for the rest of the period.

Figure 28. Percentage use share of book viewed across month – JISC e-book Business titles 100

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Table 12 provides a ranking for Engineering e-books. As can be seen most performed relatively poorly.

CIBER at University College London, page 48 of 60

Table 12. JISC Engineering e-books: individual title rankings Title Ranking % of total use (see according to Table 6) usage (see Table 6) Chemical Engineering Volume 6: Chemical Engineering Design 8 4.8 Engineering Materials 1 10 3.6 Structural and Stress Analysis 12 2.4 Chemical Engineering Volume 2 13 2.0 Measurement and Instrumentation Principles 15 1.7 Aerodynamics for Engineering Students 16 1.6 Engineering Materials 2 17 1.5 Fundamentals of Wireless Communication 20 1.2 Modern Structural Analysis 21 1.1 A Short Course in Foundation Engineering 22 0.8 Better Places to Live 23 0.7 Conceptual Structural Design 24 0.6 A Short Course in Soil and Rock Slope 25 Engineering 0.5 Better Places to Work 26 0.4 Figure 29 gives the monthly percentage share use by title for Engineering e-books.

Large variations in usage were recorded for Chemical Engineering Volume 6. The percentage share use of this e-book jumped from 9% in January to 26% in February and increased again to 40% in April. Usage of the title subsequently fell back to 21% in May and attracted about 10% of use during the summer months. The percentage share use of Engineering Materials 1 doubled in use from about 12% in April to 21% in May 2008, use of this title again increased in October 08 to 29%.

CIBER at University College London, page 49 of 60

Figure 29. Percentage use share of book viewed across month – JISC Engineering e-books 100 90

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Key 13 Engineering Materials 1 14 Engineering Materials 2 15 Aerodynamics for Engineering Students 16 Chemical Engineering Volume 2 17 Chemical Engineering Volume 6: Chemical Engineering Design 18 Measurement and Instrumentation Principles 19 Structural and Stress Analysis 20 Fundamentals of Wireless Communication 21 A Short Course in Foundation Engineering 22 Conceptual Structural Design 23 A Short Course in Soil and Rock Slope Engineering 24 Better Places to Live 25 Better Places to Work 26 Modern Structural Analysis

3.2.7.2 Institutional analysis This section illustrates institutional diversity in regard to individual title usage: three books, one from each of the case study subjects have been selected. In the case of the media book Media, Gender and Identity has been selected for this purpose (Table 13).

The top ten universities (about 8%) accounted for 35% of this title’s use. Sheffield Hallam University accounted for about 9% of views to this title.

CIBER at University College London, page 50 of 60

Table 13. top ten universities using the JISC e-book Media Gender and Identity University N % Sheffield Hallam Univ 4668 8.9 Lancaster Univ 2619 5.0 Liverpool John Moores Univ 1836 3.5 Univ of Portsmouth 1480 2.8 Univ of the Arts, London 1407 2.7 Univ of Southampton 1368 2.6 Univ of Birmingham 1303 2.5 Univ of Newcastle Upon Tyne 1204 2.3 Cardiff Univ 1204 2.3 Library Univ of London 1120 2.1 % of all university 34.9 Figure 30 looks at the monthly use of Media Gender and Identity by three universities: Lancaster, Portsmouth and Cardiff. Lancaster made high use of this title in February and March 2008, while Portsmouth had a high usage in May 2008 and moderate use in March, April and December 2008. The high use months for Cardiff were November and December 2008. Use at these universities was not evenly distributed over the period but was characterised by sudden use peaks that seemed to last just one or two months, possible the duration of a module. For subject context and comparison see Figure 21 and section 3.2.6.

Figure 30. Monthly use of JISC e-book Media Gender and Identity by three universities 1000

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CIBER at University College London, page 51 of 60

not particularly high. The University of Glamorgan accounted for less than one in ten (8%) views to this title.

Table 14. Top ten universities making use of the JISC e-book Management Concepts & Practices University N % Univ of Glamorgan 2854 8.3 Manchester Metropolitan Univ 1639 4.7 Univ of Liverpool 1467 4.2 Queen Mary Univ London 1414 4.1 Univ of Hull 1289 3.7 Univ of Sheffield 989 2.9 Univ of Glasgow 832 2.4 London South Bank Univ 803 2.3 Lancaster Univ 790 2.3 Univ Campus Suffolk 768 2.2 % of all university use 37.2 Figure 31 looks at the monthly use of Management Concepts & Practices by three universities: Liverpool, Queen Mary and Manchester. For Liverpool use was more spread out over the period and peaked in December 2008. Use at Queen Mary was high in January and February 2008 while Manchester Met recorded high use in October 2008. Again use at the three universities was not really evenly distributed but was characterised by sudden short use peaks. For subject context and comparison see Figure 21 and section 3.2.6.

Figure 31. Monthly use of JISC e-book Management Concepts & Practices by three universities 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600

University 400 Univ of Liverpool 200

Queen Mary Univ

0

Manchester Met Univ

O

08 EC D 08 V O N 08 T C O 08 P SE 08 G AU 08 L JU 0 8 N JU 08 Y A M 08 R AP 08 R A M 08 B FE 08 N JA 07 EC 7 0 V

D

N

Table 15 gives the top ten universities making use of JISC e-book Chemical Engineering Volume 6. The top ten universities accounted for 78% of use: a fairly high level of concentration. The University of Nottingham accounted for about one in seven (14%) views to this title.

CIBER at University College London, page 52 of 60

Table 15. Top ten universities using the JISC e-book Chemical Engineering Volume 6: Chemical Engineering Design University N % Univ of Nottingham 4028 14.9 Univ of Birmingham 2901 10.7 Univ of Strathclyde 2850 10.5 Cambridge Univ 2693 9.9 Univ of Bath 2308 8.5 Univ of Leeds 1601 5.9 Imperial College London 1418 5.2 Queens Univ Belfast 1294 4.8 Univ of Sheffield 1164 4.3 Univ of Edinburgh 1098 4.1 % of all university use 78.9 Figure 32 looks at the monthly use of Chemical Engineering Volume 6: Chemical Engineering Design by three universities: Bath, Leeds and Strathclyde. For Bath use of this title was particularly high in April 08. Use at Leeds was also high in April and March 2008 while Strathclyde recorded a high usage in April and November and December 2008. This book enjoyed a particular peak in use in April 2008. As for the other two titles use at the three universities was not evenly distributed and was again characterised by short usage peaks. For subject context and comparison see Figure 21 and section 3.2.6.

Figure 32. Monthly use of Management JISC e-book Chemical Engineering Volume 6: Chemical Engineering Design by three universities 2000

1500

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Universi ty 500 Univ of Bath Univ of Lee ds Univ of Strath cl

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08 C E D 08 V O N 08 T C O 08 P E S 08 G U A 8 0 L JU 0 8 N JU 08 Y A M 08 R P A 08 R A M 08 B E F 08 N JA 07

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3.2.8. Case studies Eight universities agreed to become case study universities (Birmingham, Cambridge, East Anglia, East London, Glamorgan, Glasgow, Liverpool, UCL) which meant that they were investigated in more detail and these data could be tallied with information obtained from librarians and users in the focus groups. Figure 33 give the percentage CIBER at University College London, page 53 of 60

share of use of JISC e-books by month for eight universities and explores how use changes over the period. The percentage share varies enormously from month to month, especially so in the case of Birmingham, Cambridge, Liverpool and Glamorgan. Thus in the case of Birmingham use varied from a low of 10% (in April and August 2008) to a third (in December 2008). In the case of Glamorgan in January 2008 they accounted for 41% of all use, yet in November 2007 this was only 19%.

Figure 33. Percentage share of use of JISC e-books by month of eight universities 100 90 80

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Univ College Lo ndon

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Univ of East Lon don Univ of Glamo rgan

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Univ of East Anglia

08 C E D 08 V O N 08 T C O 08 P E S 08 G U A 8 0 L JU 0 8 N JU 08 Y A M 08 R P A 08 R A M 08 B E F 08 N JA 07 C E D 07 V O

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Figure 34 gives the share of page view time by case study university. Views were particularly short at the University of East Anglia, where 41% of all views were less than 5 seconds; they were relatively long at Cambridge and UCL, where about one in five views (19% and 18%) recorded a page view time of over one minute. The data presented in Figure 34 matches the data presented at the start of this report, where the most popular page view time length is 10 seconds to 1 minute or under 5 seconds.

CIBER at University College London, page 54 of 60

Figure 34. Percentage share of page view time (grouped) by case study university 100

6 5

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Figure 35 gives the number of page views in a session across eight universities.

Cambridge and Glasgow recorded relatively high number of views in a session about a quarter viewing 20 pages or more in a session compared to UCL where just 12% of sessions viewed this number of pages. These are high busyness figures.

Figure 35. Number of content views in a session for 8 universities 100

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CIBER at University College London, page 55 of 60

Figure 36 looks at monthly usage for just four of the case study universities. For these universities use was at a minimum during the summer months June 2008 to September 2003. Use at Glamorgan peaked in January, April and November. Liverpool started at a high, there was not a noticeable peak but use, apart from the summer months, remained quite constant. Cambridge appeared to have peaks in February and April. Monthly use for Cambridge was generally lower, about half, in the final quarter of the period compared to the first six months. Birmingham recorded its main usage peak in November 2008 but also, to a lesser extent, in December 2007 and March 2008. Use at Birmingham was stronger in the last quarter compared to the first six months.

Glamorgan, Liverpool and Birmingham had a usage surge in October and November 2008.

Figure 36: JISC e-book use by Month for four universities 3000

2000

University 1000

Univ of Glamo rgan Univ of Liverpool Cambridg e Univ

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08 C E D 08 V O N 08 T C O 8 0 P E S 08 G U A 8 0 L JU 8 0 N JU 08 Y A M 08 R P A 08 R A M 8 0 B E F 8 0 N JA 07 C E D 07 V

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Figure 37 gives the share of subject usage for eight universities. About two thirds (67%) of usage at Cambridge was to Engineering titles, Birmingham (47%) and UCL (51%) were also high users of this subject. For Glamorgan about two thirds (66%) of usage was to Business and management e-books, and the University of East London (50%), the University of Liverpool (52%) and the University of Glasgow (57%) also made use of Business e-books. Over half (62%) of use at the University of East Anglia viewed JISC Media Studies e-books.

CIBER at University College London, page 56 of 60

Figure 37. Percentage share of subject usage for eight universities 100

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Figure 38 gives monthly use broken down by subject for Birmingham only. Engineering peaked in March, October and November. Business titles appeared relatively well used in December 2007 but use subsequently fell and the JISC e-books in this subject were not really used. Media titles recorded about 400 page views a month apart from the summer months and the peaks were not so apparent.

Figure 38. Monthly use broken down by subject for Birmingham 1400

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Figure 39 looks at the share of use for Engineering titles only for Birmingham. About half of usage in March 2008 was made up of views to Chemical Engineering Volume 6: CIBER at University College London, page 57 of 60

Chemical Engineering Design. This book also made up about half of Engineering usage in the last three months of 2008.

Figure 39. Percentage use share of book viewed across month – JISC Engineering e-books 13 Engineering 100 26.00 5 4 25 6 45 7 9 Materials 1 28 16 13 41 37 4 10 7 25.00 6 90 14 Engineering 38 76 9 10 8 68 24.00 Materials 2 21 7 80 5 54 24 15 Aerodynamics 23.00 10 7 56 14 for Engineering 70 22.00 45 Students 32 56 21.00 29 60 16 Chemical 11 57 20.00 28 29 Engineering 42 14 50 50 19.00 Volume 2 40 17 Chemical 18.00 12 Engineering 8 36 17.00 30 Volume 6: 29 28 4 27 22 16.00 Chemical 20 9 15.00 19 5 12 Engineering 5 13 13 10 14.00 Design 11 5 7 5 18 Measurement 13.00 0 NOV 07 JAN 08 MAR 08 MAY 08 JUL 08 SEP 08 NOV 08 and DEC 07 FEB 08 APR 08 JUN 08 AUG 08 OCT 08 DEC 08 Instrumentation Principles 19 Structural and Stress Analysis 20 Fundamentals of Wireless Communication 21 A Short Course in Foundation Engineering 22 Conceptual Structural Design 23 A Short Course in Soil and Rock Slope Engineering 24 Better Places to Live 25 Better Places to Work 26 Modern Structural Analysis Figure 40 gives monthly use broken down by subject for Glamorgan. Engineering usage peaked in November 2008 and was low for most other months apart from an early peak in usage in January 2008. Business titles were relatively well used particularly in the first five months of 2008 and achieved peak usages in January and April. In addition, there was a further smaller peak in usage in November 2008. Media titles were well viewed in January 2008 but subsequently declined and were not really used after that.

CIBER at University College London, page 58 of 60

Figure 40. Monthly use broken down by subject for Glamorgan 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600

Subject

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Engineering JAN 08

DEC 07

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Figure 41 gives monthly use broken down by subject for Liverpool. Engineering did not obtain much use in any of the months apart from November 2007. Business titles were relatively well used particularly in November 2007 the first month, use subsequently drifted down, marginally increasing in April and May, and picked up again in the last three months of 2008. Media titles were well viewed in February 2008 but views soon declined and from then were not really used.

Figure 41. Monthly use broken down by subject for Liverpool 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600

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CIBER at University College London, page 59 of 60

SEP 08

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Figure 42 looks at the share of use for Business titles only for Liverpool. Organisational Behaviour and Analysis: An Integrated Approach accounted for over half of business title use between November 2007 and February 2008. Integrated Marketing Communication accounted for half of use in May while Management Concepts & Practices made up half of use in November and December 2008.

Figure 42. Percentage use share of book viewed by Liverpool across month – JISC Business e-books 100

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Key 8 The Dynamics of Employee Relations

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10 Organisational Behaviour and Analysis: An Integrated Approach 11 Integrated Marketing Communication 12 Management Concepts & Practices

To conclude usage at the case study institutions was consistent with the data for the whole university population and shows the variation, the high peaks and quick drops in use that tie to the academic timetable.

CIBER at University College London, page 60 of 60

Further information about JISC Collections: Web: www.jisc-collections.ac.uk Email: collections@jisc.ac.uk JISC Collections is the trading name for the JISC Content Procurement Company Limited.

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Version 1.1, December 2009