Before incorporating e-books into your collection, you will need to stop and consider a few questions.

• Who is the audience? Who are you trying to reach with this new collection? Students (what age)? Businesspeople? Stay at home parents? Retirees? Travelers?

• Who has the content you need? What vendors offer the type of content in the formats that this audience will use?

• How is content selected? Do you get access to their general one-size-fits-all collection? Do you get to choose which titles are in your collection? Are you required to purchase a minimum number of copies of each title?

• How is the content controlled? Are the titles offered on a one copy / one user model or do they offer unlimited simultaneous use? If participating in a consortium collection, while you can pool your money and purchase a larger number of titles, if part of a one copy / one user model, your users will not have access to a title if another library’s user has it checked out—is that acceptable?

• What compatability issues exist? Are there certain devices, operating systems, or other limitations such as connection speed that may affect your users’ ability to access the material?

• Do the vendors provide MARC records? MARC records will greatly increase the visibility of your e-books—are they ready for you to use? Is the quality sufficient or will you need to edit them?

• Do the vendors provide technical support for your users? Directly? Or do library staff need to act as intermediaries? How good is their support (ask existing customers)?

• Do the vendors provide usage statistics? What numbers do they provide you with? Downloads? Page hits? What does the statistic actually mean?

• What is the cost? How much is the vendor charging you? Does it change as the year goes on? Are there add-on modules or licenses that you need to purchase to make downloading available to your users? Is this a subscription model or are you buying permanent rights to the content?