A greener option for e-book acquisition? Our experiences of a platform for individual selection

Abstract

E-book suppliers offer various ways to purchase e-books, such as Demand Driven Acquisition (PDA) models as well as different packages. Most often the package options include additional e-books that never were, nor will be, in demand in your Library. These additional e-books might not come with a great extra initial cost. However, they most probably will make an unnecessary carbon footprint. According to Landauer’s principle data processing will always require a certain minimal power expenditure. One way to make sure we acquire only e-books in demand is to handpick them, a method considered to be time consuming and costly. In this poster we use graphs and pictures to illustrate and evaluate the Humanities Library’s purchase pattern for e-books outside packages over the last 10 years. We compare statistics such as price, subject, access and different purchase options. Two different purchasing methods were used during these 10 years: EBL’s PDA-model (2009-2014) and acquisition from the GOBI Library Solution’s platform (2016-2019). In 2004, the University of Gothenburg became the first university in the world to be environmentally certified under both ISO14001 and EMAS. How can we incorporate environmental aspects into our future acquisition?