The landscape for purchasing ebooks continues to shift at a rapid pace. The sales of print monographs continues to fall precipitously and digital sales growth do not fill the gap. Monograph use in digital formats is growing exponentially. The use-based models of PDA/DDA and STL have become a significant part of the landscape, reshaping academic library workflows and the nature of collection development. As these new models have appeared and been widely adopted, business models have struggled to keep up, both for libraries and publishers. Most pricing has been based on traditional print sales/collecting models, which does not as it turns out reflect how the new models perform. More content is being delivered to libraries than ever before and at a substantially lower cost, which poses an imminent threat to the sustainability of monograph publishing. Publisher changes in pricing, embargoes and withdrawal from new models entirely require libraries to continuously recalibrate collecting strategies, workflows and budgets. And as library budgets continue to decline, the sustainability of libraries as we currently know them is drawn into the maelstrom. Without understanding the impact of models on each part of the academic ecosystem, we are destined to continue in conflict. Please join a discussion between a publisher, vendor and librarian of these critical issues.
YBP Library Services, 1997-current ebrary, 2005-2007 Regenstein Library, Acquisitions Dept., University of Chicago http://www.niso.org/news/events/2015/virtual_conferences/eternal_ebooks/
