Playing “Moneyball” in Librarianship:  The Winning Strategy of Gap Analysis By Tommy Doyle Senior Vice President, Elsevier

“…Researchers and students need both journals and books to build their knowledge around a topic. Journal content provides results of the latest research, while book content provides an interdisciplinary view, along with fundamental and comprehensive knowledge. Book content can give the wide-angle view of an emerging topic or one that is changing. At the same time, the proliferation of mobile devices is shifting preferences for this type of content even further towards eBooks. There is a great deal of change happening in the publishing industry to drive and support this shift. Librarians investing in book content will see sustained value: eBooks are research resources that maintain their value for extended periods. In fact, older books contribute significantly to eBook usage well beyond their first few years. eBook usage peaks when two to three years old and distributes relatively evenly thereafter. Research shows that about half of all full-text chapter downloads (FTCs) are generated by eBooks less than five years old, and half by eBooks six to twenty years old. Even after about nine years, eBooks still contribute approximately 30 percent FTCs in terms of a lifetime usage of twenty years…”