major sets of responsibilities that need to be carried out, in order to manage their e-book collections, and that Thai academic libraries have adopted. These comprise: Discovering sources of academic e-books; Allocating a budget for e-books; Forming a set of selection criteria; Choosing a purchase model; Negotiating licenses; Acquiring e-books; Promotion and user education activities; and Monitoring usage. The stages that Thai academic libraries have adopted in e-book management are similar to those found by many previous studies to have been implemented in other academic libraries (Fieldhouse & Marshall, 2012; Vasileiou et al., 2012b). Further to this, the management approaches used for e-books are similar to those employed for their print resource counterparts. In the interviews, most of the participants agreed that they managed their e-book collections with exactly the same staged approach that they used for print books. When invited to talk about the management approaches used for library e-books, all the librarians stated that there were no formal written methods for e-book collection management. Accordingly, each library had created an informal set of guidelines for e-book management, one adapted from existing collection management policy for print resources. It might be argued, however, that electronic resources require attention at their own right, just as much as do print resources. As Lee & Boyle (2004) suggest, libraries should consider formulating a formal collection development policy that identifies a unique criteria to each different type of library material. As most of the academic libraries in this study had not yet established formal plans for managing their e-book collections, this does seem to prefigure several problems regarding e-book collection management as a whole within Thai academic libraries. One obvious problem from lack of a formal plan for e-books management is many libraries in this study seem uncertain about the formulation of their e-books collection. With regard to the establishment of e-books collection, most of it relies heavily on the decision of the library director which seems to be changing frequently. This results in the librarians are unable to provide a foundation for future planning about e-books collection within the library. In additions, an absence of a formal plan could also link to a bias in the collection management. As evidenced by the data collected from the interview with Thai academic librarians, one of them stated that the library did not have any policy regarding e-books because there was a librarian who took control of the whole management process of library e-books already. Furthermore,
major sets of responsibilities that need to be carried out, in order to manage their e-book collections, and that Thai academic libraries have adopted. These comprise: Discovering sources of academic e-books; Allocating a budget for e-books; Forming a set of selection criteria; Choosing a purchase model; Negotiating licenses; Acquiring e-books; Promotion and user education activities; and Monitoring usage. The stages that Thai academic libraries have adopted in e-book management are similar to those found by many previous studies to have been implemented in other academic libraries (Fieldhouse & Marshall, 2012; Vasileiou et al., 2012b). Further to this, the management approaches used for e-books are similar to those employed for their print resource counterparts. In the interviews, most of the participants agreed that they managed their e-book collections with exactly the same staged approach that they used for print books. When invited to talk about the management approaches used for library e-books, all the librarians stated that there were no formal written methods for e-book collection management. Accordingly, each library had created an informal set of guidelines for e-book management, one adapted from existing collection management policy for print resources. It might be argued, however, that electronic resources require attention at their own right, just as much as do print resources. As Lee & Boyle (2004) suggest, libraries should consider formulating a formal collection development policy that identifies a unique criteria to each different type of library material. As most of the academic libraries in this study had not yet established formal plans for managing their e-book collections, this does seem to prefigure several problems regarding e-book collection management as a whole within Thai academic libraries. One obvious problem from lack of a formal plan for e-books management is many libraries in this study seem uncertain about the formulation of their e-books collection. With regard to the establishment of e-books collection, most of it relies heavily on the decision of the library director which seems to be changing frequently. This results in the librarians are unable to provide a foundation for future planning about e-books collection within the library. In additions, an absence of a formal plan could also link to a bias in the collection management. As evidenced by the data collected from the interview with Thai academic librarians, one of them stated that the library did not have any policy regarding e-books because there was a librarian who took control of the whole management process of library e-books already. Furthermore,
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