What do demand-driven e-lending, e-acquisition and e-cataloguing activities really cost: A case study in Tallinn University of Technology Library

According to C. A. Mandel: „We are all spending money, some of us know how much, fewer of us know what for“ (Mandel 1988, p. 220). For over a several decades, many academic libraries have been purchasing books requested by their patrons or customers. The ease and effectiveness of demand-driven acquisitions definitely helps to optimize acquisitions budget as well. Nowadays university libraries increasingly turn to e-books as an alternative to purchasing multiple copies. Academic libraries have for years been forced to purchase large packages of e-books that are of questionable financial value because so much of the content is not used. The number of content units downloaded from large e-book packages byuniversity patrons is not growing. E-books have several advantages as compared to physical books. Since April 2013, the e-books from ProQuest Ebook Central (more than 800 000) are available via Tallinn University of Technology Library for a selection. They are available almost instantly and usually it is possible to see the content of e-books before making purchase decision. Through this demand-driven acquisition and lending model, the library offers its users a much wider range of titles, while ensuring that more of the titles purchased are used. A lot of studies are conducted to compare print and ebook collections: collection size, expenditure on print books and ebooks, and usage statistics. But only very few cost accounting surveys involving different library activities have been carried out in Estonia (Kont, 2015a; Kont 2015b: Kont 2016) and none have been published in the area of the e-books before ether in Estonia and, based on the information known to the author, elsewhere as well. The purpose of the present paper is to investigate the cost of activities related to purchasing, cataloguing, and lending processes in TTU Library based on the example of the time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) method. More specifically, the study concerns the individually acquired, catalogued and lent as short-time loans e-books. The aim of the current paper is to find out: 1) How much does it cost to acquire the e-book? 2) How much does it cost to borrow the e-book? 3) How much does it cost to catalog the e-book? The results are interpreted on the basis of directions in the literature, and the author’s opinions based on long-term experience working in Estonian academic libraries. The results of Acquisition and cataloging case studies are compared to printed books studies compiled in the TTU Library in 2012/2013