Ebooks usage 2016: a glance at the figures

We have recently completed the epic exercise of compiling 2016 usage statistics for over 75,000 ebooks on more than sixty platforms. Cambridge librarians can download the full dataset from the Usage statistics section of the ebooks@cambridge intranet site, but for those of you looking to get a quick idea, here are some key observations …

3.3 million hits were recorded on ebooks…

Let’s have a look at how these hits were distributed:

 

ebooks usage continues to increase, albeit more slowly…

As you can see from the graph below, the steep growth in ebooks usage that we saw between 2013 and 2015 has slowed down and looks as though it is starting to plateau. Neverthless, there was still an increase in usage of 4.43% from 2015.

No surprises, October was the busiest month for ebooks usage…

…followed closely by November, while at the other end of the spectrum July then June were the quietest:

Let’s take a closer look at the platforms

The five ebook platforms with the biggest usage in 2016 were:

• MyiLibrary (921,455)

• Dawsonera (520,376)

• ebrary (397,924)

• Springer (249,965)

• Cambridge Core (197,918)

The fastest growers from 2015 (excluding newly acquired platforms) were:

• Wiley (+123.88%)

• ICE Virtual Library (+100%)

• English Historical Documents (+90.97%)

• CRCnetBase Vet/Engineering/Physics (+90.91%)

• Brill (+66.14%)

At the other end, the five platforms with lowest usage were:

• Kotobarabia (17)

• Manchester Medieval Sources (21)

• University Press Scholarship Online (60)

• GeoScienceWorld (71)

• Archaeopress (77)

And the five platforms with the greatest falls in usage?

• Elsevier eLibrary* (-85.35%)

• Kotobarabia (-83.65%)

• AccessMedicine (-70.03%)

• SIAM (-65%)

• IEEE (-60.34%)

*It should be noted that Elsevier have changed the way they count the usage for their eLibrary platform, from counting page views to chapter views, hence why the medical etextbooks statistics have dipped dramatically.

And finally, the top 20 ebooks for 2016 were …

Click on the links for authenticated access, on and off-campus:

1. Oxford Scholarly Authorities on International Law* (22,384 hits)
2. Brain gender (12,263 hits)
3. Reconstructing quaternary environments (11,809 hits)
4. Classroom-based research and evidence-based practice (11,770 hits)
5. Research methods in education (10,785 hits)
6. Mostly harmless econometrics: an empiricist’s companion (9515 hits)
7. Unlocking assessment: understanding for reflection and application (8679 hits)
8. Introductory statistics (8529 hits)
9. Bach’s Well-tempered clavier: the 48 Preludes and Fugues (8460 hits)
10. Kicking away the ladder (7881 hits)
11. Quantitative approaches in Business Studies (7750 hits)
12. Ethnographic studies in subjectivity: becoming sinners… (7636 hits)
13. Commentary on Lysias, Speeches 1-11 7582 hits)
14. Economics of financial markets (7290 hits)
15. States and power (7084 hits)
16. Case study research in educational settings (6931 hits)
17. Beyond the natural body (6768 hits)
18. Suicide: a study in Sociology (6602 hits)
19. Chicago Manual of Style Online (6230 hits)
20. Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity (6094 hits)

*Considered an individual title by the publisher, but is actually more like an electronic resource, giving access to various titles. We have included it though as the number of hits it received seems to stand alone and is not the sum of the hits for the titles which appear on OSAIL.

Want to know more?

Download the complete spreadsheet of usage statistics for 2016 from the Usage statistics section of the ebooks@cambridge intranet site, or contact ebooks@lib.cam.ac.uk.