Longitudinal evaluation reveals sustained demand for high-use e-books in academic libraries, suggesting initial evidence-based acquisition spending thresholds can be substantially reduced.
The Metro State University library undertook an evidence-based acquisitions e-book project utilizing Elsevier’s Evidence Based Selection (EBS) in 2022 and made e-book purchases in 2023 based on yearlong usage. We then reviewed our purchased e-book usage in 2026 to evaluate if the titles had experienced continued use or had not been used further. We largely found that titles that initially had higher usage continued to see increased usage and that many titles with 1 usage often had no further usage. Our largest takeaway was that our initial investment, both spend and collection access, in EBS could have been much smaller since we had to purchase many e-books with limited usage.
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Becca Peters (2026) studied this question.
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