ARL Guidelines

eBooks that fit the NetLibrary model, i.e. electronic manifestations of physical entities/units, should be counted in the ARL Statistics in the following ways:

Expenditures

eBook units purchased should be included under Q.4 Monographic Volumes Purchased and expenditures for these units should be included under Q.16 Expenditures for Monographs.

Counting

eBook units should also be counted under Q1-4 Volumes in Library as long as these eBooks have been purchased and are owned by your library. If you have access to NetLibrary titles as a result of participating in various consortia, DO NOT report these eBooks as your library's property unless the eBooks actually belong to your library. If the books were purchased by a consortium, they may belong to the consortium itself and not to the participating libraries. Report under Volumes in Library only the number of eBooks that belong to your library and are cataloged, classified and made ready for use.

Added Gross

Do not include under Q.2 Volumes Added Gross any digital books such as eBooks and computer files or other collections that were added to the collection as a result of a one time download or addition to the OPAC (such as large gift collections or inclusion of other large collections that were previously uncataloged or not counted). Include these items in Volumes Held of the previous year (line Q1a) and provide a footnote explaining the revision to Line 1a. Provide a footnote explaining how many eBooks you are reporting, preferably by specifying the products and the number of titles.