Jim, Thanks so much for calling attention to this work. It’s been a challenging and rewarding collaboration to build the protocols and infrastructure that allowed us to gather these data from many dozens of institutions. We’d love to hear reactions and suggestions about additional analyses we can conduct with these data as well, which stand to offer value both to libraries interested in comparing their acquisitions practices with peer institutions and for publishers interested in how their materials are acquired.
Our next report, which will be out later this year, will also include data from a second LSP and many dozens more institutions, which we hope will help to round out our sample. Academic libraries in the US that use WMS or Alma, which have not already participated in the data gathering, are most welcome to join. It is extremely easy to participate, so please contact me directly.
Finally, let me acknowledge and thank Katherine Daniel, an analyst at Ithaka S+R who is the first author on the paper, and the Mellon Foundation, which has supported this research.
Very best,
Roger
Roger C. Schonfeld
Director, Library and Scholarly Communication Program
Ithaka S+R
Twitter: @rschon
Email: [log in to unmask]
Tel: 212.500.2338
From: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2018 10:46 PM
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Subject: New From ITHAKA S+R: “Library Acquisition Patterns: A Preliminary Report ... ”
From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2018 19:27:00 -0700
Every library will have its own acquisition practices, evolved in some isolation in response to local circumstances and opportunities. A new Ithaka S-R report uses the statistical possibilities of a common LSP system to take a first look at what can be known of current book-buying by a broad but thin sample of libraries (54 institutions of widely varying sizes and missions).
Everything about the report is necessarily preliminary and subject to change when the authors (Esposito and Schonfeld) go on to a larger data set. Do Gobi (ex-YBP) and Amazon really hold 71% of the market share? (The top 10 vendors include ones whose shares go down to under 1% -- which makes me ask, how big is this market?) Are firm orders still really the order of the day? And is DDA intrinsically hard to track? The questions are interesting and important and whet the appetite for what can be learned from a much deeper dive. The URL (short report, read online or download PDF):
http://www.sr.ithaka.org/
Jim O'Donnell
ASU