Digital Technologies for Book Publishing

This paper is based on an Australian government-funded research project looking at the implications of digitization for the book publishing industry, which was originally completed in 2008 and later extended to cover up to the present day. Although Australian-based the project and subsequent research has wider implications for application elsewhere. The paper initially provides a snapshot of Australian book publishing in a global context, and then summarizes our findings on the current and potential future impact of digital technologies. The original research employed an interpretive research paradigm, using a mixed methodology design, including an online survey of book publishers and the conduct of 14 case studies. The extension of the original research project led to its being given a more global dimension. In reporting this new research, the paper discusses in detail the diverse range of technologies, their limitations and the risks and opportunities they offer to the book publishing industry. This includes insights into the business as well as technical issues confronting the industry.     

The Big Deal — ten years on

This paper describes the highlights of an exploratory deep log analysis of journal usage on OhioLINK, conducted as part of the MaxData project. OhioLINK, the original ‘Big Deal’, provides a single digital platform of nearly 6,000 full‐text journals for more than 600,000 people in Ohio and the investigation aimed to assess it after approximately 10 years. The data was generated from an SPSS analysis of the raw (unprocessed) server logs for June 2004 to December 2004. Approximately 1,215,000 items were viewed on campus in October 2004 and 1,894,000 items viewed off campus between June and December 2004. There are a number of usage analyses including: demand and activity; number and name of journal; date of publication; subject/discipline of journal and method of searching/navigating.