What is it about?
We look at six sample ebooks from a college library, examining their characteristics, with a deep dive into the meaning of usage statistics. We discuss the problems with how the usage statistics are defined and calculated by different ebook providers.
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Why is it important?
Librarians measure "cost per use" when evaluating electronic resources. That is, we look at the annual cost of the resource and divide that by the number of times it was used in the year. As we see, usage of ebooks is defined in different ways, and can not be compared across platforms. This has significant ramifications for library budgeting and planning.
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This page is a summary of: The secret lives of ebooks, Convergence The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, January 2018, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1354856517751379.
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