An Interesting Case Study on Managing Kindle E-Books
by LCS on 05/05/12
A fascinating study that I highly recommend to my fellow
librarians is Richard E. Sapon-White’s article “Kindles and Kindle E-Books in
an Academic Library,” published in the January 2012 (volume 56, number 1) issue
of Library Resources & Technical Services.
Everyone is aware of the surge in popularity of Kindles and
Kindle e-books. As they are becoming
more ubiquitous, it is time that all libraries consider ways to
incorporate them into their services and collections, and in turn, for
catalogers to provide the most effective access to these emerging
literary tools.
Sapon-White’s description of Oregon State University’s
six-month pilot project with Kindles preloaded with e-books discusses the
difficulties libraries face with proprietary devices such as Kindles and their effects
on the practices of collection development, acquisitions, cataloging, and
circulation.
OSU’s task force decided to apply full
cataloging to each title, providing access through the local catalog and
through WorldCat. The titles were housed
in the e-readers, which were kept at the circulation desk, so call numbers were
unnecessary for physical location purposes.
Instead, staff assigned “Kindle eBook” in field 099. This allowed staff and patrons to find all
Kindle titles by doing a call number search for “Kindle eBook.” With the records in the local catalog having
a location display of “Valley Circulation,” patrons were directed to the
circulation desk to obtain the e-readers and their titles.
After discovering that PCC guidelines allowed it, staff also
decided to apply provider-neutral e-monograph cataloging procedures to these
titles. For copy cataloging, they
preferred provider-neutral records, but when none were found, they used records
containing “Kindle ed.,” or, if none with that edition statement were found,
they used the most complete record. They
edited all copy to contain provider-neutral guidelines. The non provider-neutral records that were edited
into guideline-compliant records for copy cataloging will likely be merged with
provider-neutral records in WorldCat, at which point the local bibliographic
records should be replaced.
One quarter of the titles required original cataloging. Perhaps the biggest challenge was that many
of the e-books lacked much of the bibliographic data present in print titles,
such as edition, publisher data, publication date, or ISBN, among other
information. Therefore, the catalogers had
to look elsewhere for that data, using AACR2 9.0B1 and RDA rule 2.2.2.2. Unfortunately, that information was not
always available, even from Amazon. This
presents difficulties for catalogers and scholars who desire more detailed data.
Several of the titles supplied no information on author,
edition, or publisher, and no print equivalents could be found in WorldCat. Short records had to be created consisting of
title, at least one subject heading, and the generic call number in the 099
field. Because they were of dubious
bibliographic value, these short records were not added to WorldCat.
All records were given code “z” for specific material
designation in field 007 subfield b, because Kindle e-books differ from conventional
print resources as well as other electronic resources; the individual titles
are not in a physical format, nor are they remotely accessible. Additionally, all Kindle e-books lack traditional
pagination, so all copy and original records were given “1 online resource”
unqualified by pagination in the 300 field.
In addition to the effects of Kindle e-books on OSU’s cataloging, the ramifications on collection
development, acquisitions, and circulation policies and procedures were also
substantial. Oregon State University handled
them admirably, devising what I think are excellent ways of managing this new
type of resource. In fact, OSU’s procedures
resulted in a very wide use of their Kindles, with additional Kindles soon having
to be purchased to handle the great interest by patrons.
I recommend this article to my colleagues. If you have Kindle e-books in your library or
are considering purchasing them, it is an invaluable case study that contains
some excellent insights and ideas put to practical use. More importantly, even if you do not have
Kindles in your library, you will be inspired by the adaptability and creative
problem solving of OSU’s library staff, traits that we librarians will have to
possess if libraries are to remain relevant and valuable in the face of constantly
emerging new technologies.