Purchasing academic ebooks is not as straightforward as one might think. Models that people might be used to, e.g. Kindle ebooks, are not available for academic institutions. Below are some key points regarding the purchase of academic ebooks.
- The library relies on 4 aggregate suppliers to purchase ebooks. The ebooks will then be hosted on their own platform (e.g. DawsonEra) or on the publisher's platform (e.g. Cambridge University Press).
- Not every book is available to purchase as an electronic book. This is normally down to the publisher allowing or not allowing its electronic publication.
- If an ebook is available to purchase there are a number of licenses/access models that we must pick between. Not of all of these models are available for an individual title so sometimes we have no option but to pick a more restrictive model as that is the only option available to us.The models that exist are:
- Unlimited access - allows any number of concurrent users for an unlimited period. This is our preference but tends to be the most expensive model of access.
- Limited concurrent users - will only allow a certain number of users to access the ebook at one time, normally 1 or 3 user licenses. This means we need to buy multiple copies of the ebook to allow multiple access especially for large courses. We have had some ebooks that are over £1,000 for a 1 user license so this is sometimes not a viable option.
- Credit based system - an ebook will have for example 400 credits. Each time a user logs in to view that ebook, a credit will be used (unless the same user accesses the ebook again within 24 hours). In theory, if a course has hundreds of students, they could all log in to view the book in one day and use all of the credits.
- If there is no ebook available we rely on our digital copies service to provide a section of the ebook which is compliant with copyright restrictions. The link to the digital copy can then be added to the Talis Aspire Reading List. This does not allow the whole book to be scanned, normally it is around 10% of the book.