For many years, librarians with an interest in the area of e-books
met to discuss and inform JISC Collections on the acquisition and
develop of e-books in education. When the JISC e-books working group
was first formed, there was little knowledge or information available on
the e-books landscape, not just in terms of the supply chain, but on
how e-books could shape learning, teaching and research. The e-books
working group sought to resolve this by commissioning a wide range of
studies to provide librarians, publishers and JISC Collections with
critical information upon which to develop strategies for the
acquisition and licensing of e-books. The reports from the studies are
available below:
This report explored the e-books landscape in 2006 and looked at the
challenges and barriers facing HE libraries, publishers and JISC
Collections in acquiring e-books. It makes recommendations on how JISC
should proceed to help libraries in providing e-textbooks to the their
students. The report identified 8 key action points and was instrumental
in the formation of the JISC national e-books observatory project.
This study developed a testbed to help provide a solution to one of
the key challenges identified for the take-up of e-books: the lack of
standardised e-book catalogue records and also the lack of
interoperability between different e-book metadata records.
An investigation into free e-books
March 2004, Ylva Berglund, Alan Morrison, Rowan Wilson and Martin Wynne
This study, undertaken by AHDS, informed the e-books working group on
the availability of free e-books for teaching and learning. The study
gathered information on what free e-books were available, the formats of
these free e-book, usage of the free e-books in education and the needs
and attitudes of FE and HE users in the arts and humanities subject
area.
This study took an in-depth look at e-textbook landscape, exploring
the challenges and barriers to the adoption of e-textbooks in HE and FE.
Despite being undertaken in 2003, this report includes a wealth of
information on business models, promotional models and supply chain
models that are still of relevance today. The report was used by the
e-books working group to help develop its vision foe e-textbooks in
education.
This report highlighted the barriers that institutions were facing in
the uptake of e-books and made recommendations on how these could be
removed and how e-books could be promoted more fully by a wider range of
institutions and individuals. This report is still relevant today.
The
E-book Mapping Exercise
April 2003, Chris Armstrong and Ray Lonsdale of Information Automation
Ltd
The aim of the mapping exercise was to inform the JISC e-books
working group on the e-book needs of specific disciplines within Further
Education and Higher Education. This report details the findings of the
exercise.
This paper set out the issues that the JISC e-books working group
needed to consider in 2001 when developing one of their first strategies
for e-books within UK higher and further education.
