What's the delay? Managing e and p publication dates

• Describes the challenges of acquiring eBooks on an approval plan.
• Provides data about the average publication delay between print and eBooks.
• Discusses trends towards simultaneous publication for select subjects and publishers.

This case study describes the challenges of acquiring eBooks on an approval plan due to publication delays between print and electronic formats. The purpose of this analysis was to determine the average delay between print and eBook publication dates so that appropriate hold periods could be built into the libraries' approval plan. Print publication dates were compared to eBook publication dates for approximately 30,000 eBooks to calculate the average delay between print and eBook availability. The data was further analyzed to calculate average delays for select publishers and subjects.