JISC Collections

Ten UK HE institutions, eight textbook publishers and three aggregators took part in the e-textbook business models trials, which started in May 2009 and finished in May 2010. Seventeen textbook titles were involved, in 24 separate trials across the 10 libraries. The trials followed  a landscape report on digital textbooks in UK higher education, published in April 2009.

E-versions of the titles were made accessible to students via the libraries. The aim of the trials was to evaluate the impact this accessibility had on, for example, publishers’ print sales to students, library purchases and loans of print copies, and to consider possible business models for library provision of digital textbooks. Data was collected on these activities along with the analysis of usage data of the digital textbooks.

Full information on the study is available on the e-textbook business models study website

Case studies of a number of the libraries participating in the trials are accessible in the case studies area and are an interesting read.