JISC

e-Books are the cover story in this month’s Library and Information Update, which highlights a JISC project that is making freely available a range of core reading list materials over the next two years.

An article on the project, by Caren Milloy – manager of the JISC National E-Books Observatory Project – explains how the e-books have been made available through agreement with publishers as a means of stimulating the e-books market which has so far been unable to deliver affordable core reading materials on a large enough scale for the needs of students in higher education. The project, writes Caren, ‘is about meeting the requirements for flexible licensing and pricing models that can provide students with access to their taught course texts online. It is about how e-books… can be used better, how they might fulfil their potential as a vital educational resource.’ 'The project is about how e-books… can be used better, how they might fulfil their potential as a vital educational resource.’

Update is the library publication with the widest circulation among librarians and information professionals, and involving librarians is a key aim of the project, says Caren: ‘The routes through which users discover an e-book are varied and as yet there is no consensus. But one thing is clear: with e-books, the librarian is somewhere near the centre of the chain. Librarians therefore need to become involved, and engaging librarians is central to JISC Collections’ promotion of this initiative which we hope will have a major impact on the use of e-books.’

Another strand of the project is analysis of the use of the e-books made available by the project. Deep-log analysis and the resultant data will monitor the usage and analyse the ‘digital fingerprints’ of users, helping to further the understanding of publishers, librarians, JISC and other bodies on how e-books are used, how they can be built better and how they can be made available and promoted within institutions. Another article, by Dave Nicholas, who will lead this aspect of the project, gives details of some of the techniques that will be used to capture and analyse the data.

To read the articles, please go to: Library and Information Update 

To listen to a podcast about the project, please go to:  Breaking down the e-books barrier 

For further information about the project, please go to: JISC National E-Books Observatory Project