e-books for FE:a digital library for FE colleges

RSC NI Update

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e-books for FEBackground to the Project

★ LSC and JISC funded project

★ As a result 2990 e-books are now freely available to all UK FE colleges. If each library had to buy 1 copy of the FE e-books, in print, the cost for each institution would be £116,879.10.

★ Access is for 5 years, FREE of charge

★ By providing FE colleges with a critical mass of relevant e-books we aim to help colleges serve their diverse community of learners.

★ Unlimited, simultaneous user access means that unlike the print world means all students have access to a digital library 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This provides clear benefits for distance learners, part time students or people who simply prefer not to go to the campus to read material.

★ Many of the titles are available for the first time as an ebook

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BTEC National Health and Social Care Book 1 1,277 2,167

BTEC National Sport Book 1 (2nd Edition) 1,045 1,707BTEC National Information Technology Practitioners Book 1 (2nd Edition) 949 1,385

BTEC National Public Services: Student Book, Book 1 1,051 1,244BTEC National Children's Care, Learning and Development Student Book 616 978

BTEC National Sport and Exercise Sciences 441 739BTEC National Uniformed Public Services Book 2 (2nd Edition) 431 699BTEC National Construction : Building Services Engineering and Civil Engineering 303 634

Child Development : An Illustrated Guide (2nd Edition) 381 601

Essential Early Years 367 576

Beauty Therapy Study Skills 209 539

BTEC National Travel and Tourism Book 2 (2nd Edition) 297 529

BTEC First Public Services (Uniformed) Student Book 263 493

BTEC First Travel and Tourism Student Book (2nd Edition) 221 456

Early Years Management in Practice 265 439

Sport Psychology 234 422

BTEC First : ICT Practitioners (2nd Edition) 140 392

Beauty Therapy : The Basics for NVQ 1 and 2 (2nd Edition) 146 355

Beauty Therapy Fact File (4th Edition) 186 349

BTEC Introduction to Business 116 326

Plumbing : NVQ and Technical Certificate Level 3 144 323

OCR AS Psychology Student Book 188 321

BTEC National Beauty Therapy Sciences 157 320

BTEC First : Children's Care Learning and Development 146 310

Introduction to Childcare and Education (2nd Edition) 150 308

HNC Early Education and Childcare for Scotland 133 298

BTEC Introduction to Sport and Leisure 110 277

Care in Practice for Higher (2nd Edition) 66 273

Sports Massage 106 267

Basic Engineering Mathematics (4th Edition) 158 259

Plastering NVQ and Technical Certificate Level 2 171 252Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice (10th Edition) 155 248BTEC National for IT Practitioners : Core Units :Common Core and Specialist Unit 199 244

Modern Art : A Very Short Introduction 120 241

Student's Dictionary of Psychology (4th Edition) 138 218Edexcel Diploma : Construction and the Built Environment : Level 2 Foundation Di 91 217

CACHE Entry Level Certificate in Preparation for Childcare 80 214

Automobile Electrical and Electronic Systems 91 203

Higher Human Biology (2nd Edition) 140 202

Psychology in Practice : Sport 136 197

Psychology in Practice : Health 122 196

Feminist Sociology 81 192Higher National Computing : Core Units for BTEC Higher Nationals in Computing an 120 192

This is not technology

★The term e-book is already defunct, in the eyes of your users its just another collection of online stuff.

★It’s the content that matters, and what you do with it....★Many of the titles within the collection are available for the first

time as an e-book★However the collection needs to be signposted and promoted so

that your users can find and use this ‘stuff’★There are numerous ways of discovering ★ and accessing e-books★Ideal opportunity to raise the profile of your library and extend the

variety of places where your students can learn, but teachers, VLE administrators, IT and library staff need to work together.

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Recent headlines on e-books

Benefits of ebooksExtending access to your library

★24/7 access: the flexibility to access resources anyplace, anytime and anywhere★Device independent-access via PC and mobile devices★Portability★Space saving★Solution to managing short loan collections (including problems of theft and vandalism)★They address periods of peak demand by providing concurrent access★They offer functionality not found in hard copy, including search, and cut-and-paste with automatic citation. ★Personalisation-users can comment on, ‘tag’ & link to other resources.★e-books can have disproportionate benefits for learners with print related disabilities and students working from home

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Ealing, Hammersmith and West London college by jisc_infonet

3000 books by Mike Moran

Search inside & information retrieval

Automatic citation information

What e-books DON’T do…..

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What e-books don’t doMaking the invisible discoverable

★E-books have no value if they are not used

★In today’s impatient two-click culture, users will gravitate towards the open web if their college or publishers place unnecessary barriers in their way. ★Libraries, IT staff and publishers need to work together to make e-books easily discoverable. ★The library catalogue and VLE are the main routes for discovery for library e-book content. It is essential that MARC cataloguing records are supplied with e-books and that they are imported.★Offer a clear route to content to prevent confusion between library web pages, the library catalogue and federated searching. ★Showcase the e-resources provided by your institution.★ Students showed little understanding of the ★distinction between the e-resources provided via their University or via the open web. ★There is a multiplicity of e-content, and a multiplicity of ways to get to it and users don’t know how to get to what they want. Libraries have a big challenge in providing clear access routes to e-content. Discovery needs to be made a simple as possible.

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Barriers...

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Promoting and embedding e-stuffKey findings from the HE observatory Project:

★ Active promotion leads to higher use. Higher use means happy students, esp. part time students.

★ However the successful incorporation of e‐books into VLEs requires promotion, initial effort in inputting the links etc. and greater dialogue between librarians and teaching staff.

★ Get in touch with ebrary to incorporate your logo, branding etc into the site. Sell your services!

★ Social networking applications

★ Subject specific bookmarks advertising e‐books, putting stickers on the hard copy

★ Dummy books on the shelf to prompt users when all the print copies were on loan.

★ Coffee and croissants mornings

★ Video exemplars

★ Most popular title lists, titles to your colleagues

★ Wobblers

★ Quick start guides

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If you have used e-books from your university library how did you first find out about them?

Colleges need to develop a strategy for raising awareness of all types of e-books and developing academic literacy. Teaching staff should also be encouraged to engage more actively in pointing out to students the range of high quality free and paid for e-book content that is available.

Helping colleges build their collections of e-bookse-select framework agreement

• The project is funded for five years, but the objective is sustainability. This will involve helping FE colleges to grow their collections of e-books.

• You can download and view the usage statistics for your college

• e-select framework agreement • In addition to the centrally purchased collections, colleges will be able to

locally purchase additional e-book titles through the e-select framework agreement, including newer editions.

• Assessors from FE colleges will evaluate and rank the e-books submitted for inclusion on the following criteria:

• Relevance to qualifications taken in FE• Demonstrable discounts for FE colleges

• Opportunity for us to shape the provision of e-resources and to go beyond providing handouts to creating a dynamic environment where students can personalise, tag, annotate and share content.

• E-books, e-book platforms usability and accessibility, user testing

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What next?Meeting the demand for e-books

• There are significant gaps between what colleges need and what publishers and aggregators are offering..

• We will continue to negotiate with publishers so that the titles the community needs are made available as e-books.

• £200 million versus £50 million-the textbook conundrum

• Publishers are nervous about providing course texts online via libraries as there is  considerable concern about the possible impact on their print sales, and a high  degree of uncertainty about realistic and sustainable pricing and licensing models. 

• FE Business models study

• We know very little about student purchasing behaviour of textbooks in either print or electronic form nor how willing FE students would be willing to pay for /e-book/chapterss JISC Collections has commissioned John Cox associates to evaluate a range of business models including student purchase.

• Business Models Trials

• Subscription, chapters, printed book bundles, rental, library purchase vs student purchase

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Additional TitlesHave your say

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