Perceived Needs & Project Design
This project was devised during discussions with Dickson B Vuwa Phiri, the College Librarian. It was decided that IADP would source digital versions of textbooks that were under high demand in the reserved books section of the library. IADP and OER Africa would also look for OER that would be appropriate for the training of student teachers. These resources would be made available to students in a digital reading room accessed from the main entrance of the Library that was already under construction.
Of interest to the IADP was this pilot would test a different model from the one used in South Africa where individuals were responsible for ‘checking out’ digital books. Instead at Chancellor College ten copies of three titles would be loaded onto ten machines in the digital reading room for potentially all students to access.
Pilot Implementation & Processes
e-Books
Implementation proved slow at Chancellor College because of a number of challenges. One factor was the digital reading room took a long time to be installed and secondly the procedure to access digital versions of books the library requested from publishers proved complex. Setting up the reading room was funded from outside this project and a period of many months passed before it was complete. IADP had little influence over this but tried to keep pressure on the Chancellor College team to complete the installation. However, it was ready before the digital books were available.
The library provided a list of books that were under high demand in the reserve section. On investigation, however, it proved that most of these books were out of print or were editions that were no longer available. There were also no pre-existing digital versions of any of these titles. Compounding these problems was that some of the titles were by publishers who did not have an agreement with IADP. In an attempt to find a compromise the IADP approached one of their partner publishers, van Schaik, who had a number of similar titles to those requested in their catalogue. Van Schaik graciously agreed to offer 10 copies of 5 titles on a pro bono basis to the university. The Acting Dean of Education, Dr Dorothy Nampota, vetted these titles as appropriate.
It was also necessary to develop a system that would allow students to access the digital books but protect the rights of the publishers for this particular model of distribution. Because of the large number of potential users it was decided to eliminate student use of, and registration on, the online IADP repository. Another advantage was that because students would not access e-books from the source the chances of copyright abuse would be limited. Instead an installation team would download individual digital copies of only the approved titles into each computer’s digital book reading software, Adobe’s Digital Editions. Digital rights management, within the reader and files, would still control the number of copies that could be made. To facilitate use and access a new IADP/UNIMA interface was developed that opened as soon as the browser was activated. An additional advantage of this system was that all log-ins would be done away encouraging use of the e-books.
In August 2009, an IADP facilitator travelled to Chancellor College to help with setting up this system. Except for the chief librarian, the Chancellor College personnel supporting the pilot had all changed since it was conceived in November 2008. However, the new team were engaged and interested in the work. At this point only three of the five van Schaik titles were ready for download but the team decided to go ahead and test the installation model. The installation, however, was not without its own challenges. This was in part because the universities bandwidth is insufficient for the demands of students and staff between 08h30 and 17h00. Downloads speeds were slow but acceptable at 08h00 but impossible for all but one hour during the lunch break. Another factor was the complexity of the system that required the installation team to log into three different systems in order to access the digital books. The titles were, however, eventually downloaded to the 10 machines and the new UNIMA/IADP interface installed.
In November when the additional van Schaik titles were ready for download the installation team at Chancellor College failed to download the digital files onto the system in the absence of the IADP facilitator’s presence, despite his online communications.
OER Access
At a meeting in June the university librarian showed great interest in accessing for students and staff digital versions of SAIDE’s teacher education textbook series. This series had recently been returned to SAIDE by the publishers. As a result MS Word versions of four of the titles were released as OER. The titles included, Being a Teacher, Creating People-centred Schools, Learners and Learning, Teaching in a Changing World. These were collected and included in the new UNIMA/IADP interface built for the Digital Reading Room. In addition a sample of OER from Teacher Education in Sub Sahara Africa (TESSA) were collected in the subjects Literacy, Numeracy, Science, Social Science and Life Skills and made available from the same interface.
Pilot Products & Outcomes
Products that derived from this pilot included the acquisition of 50 digital textbooks, 40 quality OER on and a customised interface designed for the 10 computers in the digital reading room. (See accompanying Media Pack to view the Interface and OER.)
There was also capacity building for the four members of the installation team on issues as diverse as the use of NetLibrary, an online digital repository or library and Digital Rights Management.
The outcome of the pilot, however, was disappointing. A member of the installation team reported that after an initial flurry of interest from students in the first few weeks after installation interest in the digital resources dried up. In an attempt to bolster use the installation team was asked to load copies of the e-books onto the computer of Dr Dorothy Nampota, a perceived future champion of the project within the Faculty of Education and the previous Acting Dean. She was requested to familiarise herself with the titles and look for opportunities to work them into the student’s courses. This she has agreed to do but it will take time before recommendations are made and positive results are shown.
Screen from the Chancellor College Digital Reading Room Interface
Evaluation Findings & Lesson Learned
Evaluation
In August, a baseline study was performed on a sample of students to ascertain digital competencies of typical users of the digital reading room. Unsurprisingly the questionnaire results showed that those students who availed themselves to the project resources were not new users of technology. They were familiar with digital skills relating to word processing and e-mail communication. They were also regular Internet users. These students accessed computer technologies principally from university facilities but not exclusively. A small percentage had access to their own computers. They all believed that there was a place for digital resources in their studies.
However, because of poor usage patterns no follow up survey has yet been conducted as the team believes usage might improve as the e-books are worked into the students reading lists. They hope to conduct further data collection in the new year.
Lessons Learned
More illuminating are the reflections of the IADP pilot facilitator, IADP personnel involved in accessing the digital textbooks from the publishers and the Chancellor College installation team. They identify a number of issues from which we can learn.
1] Nearly all publishers shunned this model of a digital library structured similarly to how we perceive normal libraries working. They considered the security too lax and believed in time their copyright would be abused. Only two publishers seemed happy to participate, van Schaik and later Juta. It appears that publishers prefer tight control centred around individuals rather than an institution or a facility. Admittedly most were also unwilling to offer their books pro bono for this pilot as they were in negotiations with the IADP to offer the university books at a discounted rate.
2] Digital Rights Management software and structures, dependant on sound connectivity, proved extremely difficult to use in this context. Initially it was thought that students would be given permission to access the e-books from within the online platform and ban the use of downloads. However, to read books online required the individual to access the pages of the book individually. At Chancellor College this proved arduous with pages ‘timing out’ and the waiting period between pages being as long as 10 minutes. Focused reading for academic purposes was impossible.
Consequently the strategy described above where the books were downloaded to the individual machines seemed the only solution. Even this strategy of downloading 50 rights protected files (instead of 5 titles and making 10 copies locally) proved difficult with poor connectivity and complex procedures. The facilitator believes this factor was in part why the technical team were unable to download the final copies in his absence.
3] Title selection proved a stumbling point for this particular pilot. There was a disjunction between the books the library wanted and those that the IADP and their publishing partners could provide. This was in part because the books being prescribed by faculty staff were either old, old editions or out of print. This sadly is a characteristic of the Chancellor College Library’s general collection. As publishers are only interested in digitising new titles we were unable to access even one title in demand in the reserve section. While the digital books offered by van Schiak were similar in content focus and of good quality students were uninterested in reading them because they were not the prescribed readings.
4] The protracted time taken to find the e-books was made worse by the 6 month lead in time required to digitise a book. This waiting period robbed the pilot of much of its momentum and waned the enthusiasm amongst the Chancellor College team.