Evaluating e-book vendors in the era of smart libraries

In recent years, people's reading habits have undergone a digital transformation, and library funds are insufficient to meet this growing digital demand. A good way of optimizing resource allocation is the regular evaluation of suppliers to select resources. E-book resources were used as the starting point to examine the method of supplier evaluation within the concept of “smart library” using an analytic hierarchical process to integrate and weight perspectives from e-vendors, academics, and professional librarians. Findings demonstrate that both traditional and “smart” factors impact the final evaluation of e-book suppliers. In addition, the influence of smart service factors on the efficacy of library innovation can be evaluated by the linear regression method. Two systematic methods in the assessment of e-book suppliers were outlined and the concept of “smart factors” based on traditional indicators for application in constructing digital book resources was introduced.