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This paper aims to present an exploratory investigation that was used to understand consumer motives for reading internet book reviews as well as the effects of these reviews on purchasing behavior.

First, focus group interviews of 45 subjects who regularly read internet book reviews and have purchased online books were conducted. Then, content analysis was used to document the rich and diverse experiences and viewpoints of the interview participants.

This exploratory study uncovered five main motives behind the reading of internet book reviews by consumers and illustrated the effects of these reviews and opinions on consumers' purchasing and communication behavior.

The results of this study can help online booksellers to understand the role played by consumers' motives for reading internet book reviews in the book‐purchasing process, and the resulting influences on purchases. At the same time, the results can serve as a reference in establishing book review management and marketing strategies.

Searching online word‐of‐mouth reviews has become an important link in consumers' purchasing decision making. The present study investigates consumer thoughts on motives for reading internet book reviews and their effects, and puts forward several management suggestions.

The purpose of this research is to achieve automatic and accurate book purchase forecasts for the university libraries and improve efficiency of manual book purchase.

The authors presented a Book Purchase Forecast model with A Lite BERT(ALBERT-BPF) to achieve their goals. First, the authors process all the book data to unify format of books' features, such as ISBN, title, authors, brief introduction and so on. Second, they exploit the book order data to label all books supplied by booksellers with “purchased” or “non-purchased”. The labelled data will be used for model training. Last, the authors regard the book purchase task as a text classification problem and present a model named ALBERT-BPF, which applies ALBERT to extract text features of books and BPF classification layer to forecast purchased books, to solve the problem.

The application of deep learning in book purchase task is effective. The data the authors exploited are the historical book purchase data from their university library. The authors’ experiments on the data show that ALBERT-BPF can seek out the books that need to be purchased with an accuracy of over 82%. And the highest accuracy reached is 88.06%. These indicate that the deep learning model is sufficient to assist the traditional manual book purchase way.

This research applies ALBERT, which is based on the latest Natural Language Processing (NLP) architecture Transformer, to library book purchase task.

This study aims to understand how informational factors influence online purchase intention when considering secondhand books.

A conceptual model linking book condition, description, delivery cost, picture, sellers’ rating and delivery date to purchase intention was developed and tested by using structural equation modeling. Survey data from 234 respondents was used to analyze both direct and mediating relationships.

The examination demonstrates how book condition, delivery cost and sellers’ rating influence consumers’ purchase intention. Book condition directly and indirectly influenced purchase intention, while delivery cost and sellers’ rating were significant only when including the mediating variable delivery date.

This work clarifies where resources should be allocated when offering secondhand books online. Sellers should dedicate time to include informational factors such as book condition, delivery cost and sellers’ rating. Contra wise, there is little value expounding on the book’s description or providing a high-quality picture when selling online.

The purpose of this paper is to assert that, in an effort to more effectively match users' needs to purchases and extend the buying power of library budgets for e‐books, libraries should use a profiled purchase on demand option to supplement their current practices.

The paper reviews usage patterns for print and e‐books, business models for e‐books and comments on the benefits of using a patron‐driven acquisitions model.

Circulation of the print collection is slowly declining, with only 20 per cent of the collection circulating in 2009. Large purchased collections of e‐books statistics are roughly the same but those purchased through Patron‐Driven Acquisitions are assured use.

The discussion of current business models for e‐books illustrates some challenges libraries face in transitioning from print to electronic. Patron‐driven models allow libraries to help users at point of need and manage scarce resources.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results from a quantitative analysis comparing usage between collections of individually purchased e‐books and collections of e‐books purchased as part of large consortially negotiated bundles. The aim of this study is to determine if individually purchased e‐books have recorded a greater level of usage than e‐books purchased in large packages and, consequently, which of the two acquisition models is best suited for the library.

Usage rates of e‐books purchased individually from NetLibrary and MyiLibrary were compared to usage rates of e‐books purchased in large bundles from the same aggregators. Usage of e‐books purchased in large bundles directly from SpringerLink was compared to usage of e‐books on NetLibrary and MyiLibrary. The number of e‐books was obtained by simple count. Additional statistics tracked include the number of viewings.

Initial results indicate that individually purchased titles from both NetLibrary and MyiLibrary have consistently recorded a greater level of usage than the bundled titles on their respective platforms. A second quantitative analysis comparing two aggregated collections of individually selected titles to a very large bundled collection acquired directly from SpringerLink yielded somewhat different results. For the most part, SpringerLink bundled e‐books have recorded a greater level of usage when compared to bundled titles on NetLibrary and MyiLibrary.

This research is one of very few studies systematically and quantitatively comparing usage levels between e‐monographs individually selected and acquired as large bundles by a Canadian academic library.

The purpose of this paper is to find out how much the purchasing and lending of individual electronic books really cost. Additionally, this paper investigates which kind of approach would be cheaper and less time-consuming for library staff as well as library patrons – purchase or short-term loan.

This study was conducted at the Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) Library. This is the only university library in Estonia where the Ebook Central platform is adapted on a large scale. For background information, all statistical data of expenditures and average prices of purchases and short-term loans during April 2013 and December 2018 were calculated and analysed. Through a case study, the time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) method was used – all activities related to acquisition and lending of eBooks were identified, recorded in detail and analysed. More specifically, the study concerned eBooks offered in the Ebook Central platform and covered purchasing and short-term loan processes, such as receipt of order request, communication with the patron (if necessary) making a purchase or short-term loan, and feedback to the patron.

While analysing the results, it appeared there are many additional activities libraries can avoid during the eBook short-term loan process compared to purchasing. As a normality in TalTech library, purchase is always followed by a cataloguing process which increases the time and cost of this process in turn. On the basis of the current study, it can be said that short-term loan is a cheaper way to use eBooks; many activities related to the short-term loan of eBooks take remarkably less staff time and financial resources than eBooks acquisition/purchasing activities. When analysing the literature reviewed as well as collected statistical data, the problem may arise when the decision-maker librarian is not experienced, professional or long-sighted enough to understand the future behaviour of the patron or the usage of the specific eBook. When the usage reaches a certain point, it becomes an indicator of continuing future usage and so it makes sense to purchase the eBook, as the library pays no further charges once an eBook is owned.

Most studies reviewed by the author are based on the statistical data collected about expenditure, costs, usage, cost-per-use, etc. of short-term loans and purchases. While acquisitions costs, average cost per acquired item per year and cost per usage are easy to identify, it has been difficult to measure associated costs of acquisition, cataloging and circulation. The TDABC methodology seems to be one of the best tools for understanding cost behaviour and refining a cost system for university libraries. Based on the information known to the author, there is no study carried out using the TDABC methodology for analysing costs of eBook programmes.

By adopting a cross-country analysis, this study aims to investigate how consumers' perception of book covers affects their online book purchases in terms of feelings of delight and perceived value of the book.

The authors tested the hypotheses using a structural equation model using two countries' datasets obtained from 191 Japanese and 207 French consumers.

The perceived attractiveness of a picture/photo on a book cover can positively influence feelings of delight. Such emotion enhances a book's perceived value, resulting in active online book purchases. Furthermore, when the perceived value of a book is evident, the French are more strongly motivated to purchase books compared to Japanese consumers.

By simultaneously examining emotion and perceived value as an organism, the authors advance the knowledge of the relationship between book covers and online book purchases. In addition, the authors offer evidence that cross-cultural differences (between the French and Japanese) can stimulate different responses to each affective and cognitive internal state, although similar environmental stimuli are provided.

The purpose of this paper is to construct a multi-relational network for an online sharing platform in the age of the sharing economy, to identify the factors impacting users’ product adoption behavior and to predict consumers’ purchases of user-generated products on the platform.

The study conducted multi-relational network analyses of five different sub-networks in identifying influential factors for e-book adoption. Meanwhile, the study adopted machine learning methods with different classification algorithms and feature sets to predict users’ purchasing behaviors.

The authors found that an individual’s adoption of a product was correlated with his or her purchasing habits and collaboration with others on the online sharing platform. Through the inclusion of network features, the authors were able to build a predictive model that forecasted consumers’ purchases of user-generated e-books with reasonable accuracy.

The interdisciplinary approach used in the study can serve as a good reference for identifying factors impacting the product adoption behavior of users in the online sharing platform, through employing different sociological and computational methods.

The outcome of the study has provided important managerial implications, especially for the design of social commerce platform in the age of the sharing economy.

The authors verified the social influence impacting consumers’ product adoption behavior and shed light on the value of collaboration in the age of the sharing economy.

The study was the first to identify user-generated e-book adoption on an online sharing platform from a multi-relational network perspective. The idea and the approach supplied a new method of behavioral analysis in the context of a sharing economy.

The purpose of the study is to find out the budgetary allocation for books and journals (Print and Electronic) and growth of resources during 2003-2004 to 2012-2013. The study also explored the significant/non-significant relationship for budget allocated for books and journals (Print and Electronic) as well as growth of resources across the libraries. This will help the librarians of such universities to build their collection accordingly.

The data were collected with the help of a structured questionnaire. Moreover, information was obtained from the primary library records such as annual reports, budget estimates, ledgers and also the staff involved in the acquisition section. The hypotheses were tested using chi-square test. The relationship between budgetary allocation and growth of resources amongst the five university libraries during 2003-2004 to 2012-2013 were analysed and discussed.

Maharishi Dayanand University library had the highest budget for purchase of books (Rs.125 lakh), whereas Panjab University library had the highest budget (Rs.208 lakh) for purchase of journals (Print and Electronic) during 2012-2013. Panjab University library allocated Rs.18 lakh for purchase of books and Rs.208 lakh for purchase of journals (Print and Electronic) during 2012-2013. Punjabi University library allocated 16 lakh for purchase of books and 45 lakh for purchase of journals (Print and Electronic) during 2012-2013. Guru Nanak Dev University library allocated Rs.16.80 lakh as the budget for purchase of books and Rs.8.30 lakh for purchase of journals (Print and Electronic) from 2007-2008 to 2012-2013. Kurukshetra University library allocated Rs.9 lakh for purchase of books during 2010-2011 and 2011-2012, whereas it had allocated Rs.79.20 lakh for purchase of journals (Print and Electronic) during 2008-2009. Maharishi Dayanand University library allocated Rs.125 lakh for purchase of books during 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, whereas it allocated Rs.125 lakh for purchase of journals (Print and Electronic) during 2012-2013.

The study was limited to five universities of Northern India, which comprised Panjab University, Chandigarh (PU); Punjabi University, Patiala (PbiU); Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar (GNDU); Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra (KU); and Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak (MDU). The data related to budgetary allocation for resources and growth and cumulative growth of books and journals (print and electronic) during 2003-2004 to 2012-2013 were collected and analysed.

This is the first of its kind of study in these universities, which provides an overview of how much budget was allocated for collection development in these university libraries. The relation between budget allocation and growth of resources were compared, and their significant/non-significant relationship in five university libraries in North India was found.

Many libraries limit themselves to purchasing only new materials, assuming that used materials may be in poor condition or that the purchase process may be too difficult. This paper seeks to assess the benefits and disadvantages of purchasing used materials.

The paper discusses Renton Technical College Library's experience with purchasing used books.

Benefits of purchasing used books are: lower cost, quicker fulfillment of orders, and a wider selection of available titles. Disadvantages include: rare issues with book condition, and fewer free shipping and discount offers.

Including used books in their purchasing program can substantially expand the range and amount of materials libraries can collect.

This paper will be of use to any library facing budget cuts and looking for ways to continue to provide a wide variety of library materials.