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Managing budgets, developing collections and negotiating detailed licensing agreements appears overwhelming in my role as TL. Full teaching loads as an RFF teacher, day to day circulation management and keeping it all ship shape in a primary school pushing 1000 students keeps me and my colleague busy. Ebooks are not a feature of our library and reading the complex negotiations and detailed licensing agreements to be navigated in chapter 6 of Morris and Siebert. (2009) is daunting. This chapter has however thrown up required questions that need to be asked in how the licensing agreements operate. User platforms required to borrow books, single use/multiple use, long term /short term access, access due to publisher whim, bundles/single use sets, access through ERMS (electronic resource management system) to name a few. Cost of all this has not reared it’s head at all so the budget for an initial package into the ebook world is unknown. Is there the money required in the kitty to begin the journey into the ebook world? As yet, not a single student or teacher has asked if we have any ebooks. New shelving in the library has limited the ability for us to ever increase the physical collection sitting on the shelves. This alone may bring the decision forward…
Morris, C. & Sibert, L. (2009). Acquiring e-books. In S. Polanka (ed.), No shelf required : E-books in libraries [ALA Editions version] (Chapter 6, pp. 95-124). Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/lib/csuau/detail.action?docID=598919
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