This collection of approximately 3,000 e-books is part of the e-books for FE project. These e-books have been selected through extensive community consultations to provide taught course e-books for FE students and teachers. Subscription is free to all UK FE institutions thanks to funding from the Learning and Skills Council and JISC. Access to these e-books is via the ebrary platform, under unlimited concurrent access through August 2014. There is no charge to access the platform.
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Content description
A Core Collection of approximately 3,000 e-books in a variety of subjects at levels appropriate to teaching in FE Colleges in the UK. The Core Collection also includes e-books selected for their significance or relevance to FE colleges in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, e.g. titles relevant to the Scottish Curriculum. The Core Collection contains e-books from a variety of publishers, including Butterworth Heinemann, Hodder & Stoughton, Blackwell, A & C Black, Springer, Berg, Newnes and Edinburgh University Press. The e-books available cover subjects as diverse as fashion, design, software engineering, heath and social care, automobile electronics, beauty therapy, and practical lambing.
Main subject areas
The e-books in the Core Collection support taught course students in a broad range of subject areas:
- Arts and Humanities
- Business Management and General
- Education & Childcare
- Health & Life Sciences
- ICT
- Literature & Literary Studies
- Travel & Tourism
- Key Skills including Maths
- Science & Engineering
- Social Sciences and Vocational
For a full list of the titles freely available through the Core Collection please click here.
- This spreadsheet contains the full list of e-book titles. The subject categories are for guidance only and do not fully represent the subject coverage of the e-book titles. We recommended that you use the ebrary platform as it has advanced search functionality which searches the bibliographic information within the e-books.
Academic level
The approximately 3,000 e-books have been selected to meet the needs of further education students. The e-books within the collection support Diplomas, GCSE's, NVQ's/SVQ's, A levels, Scottish Highers, Foundations Degrees and more.
Updates
In addition to the centrally purchased Core Collection, colleges will be able to purchase additional e-book titles through the e-Select Framework Agreement, listing the top 100 highest ranked e-books. Assessors will evaluate and rank the e-books submitted for inclusion in the e-Select Collection on the following criteria:
- Relevance to qualifications taken in FE
- Demonstrable discounts for FE colleges
The e-select framework agreement will enable FE colleges to build upon the centrally funded Core Collections and allow collection building at a local level to ensure that every FE college in the UK can provide its students with a highly relevant, usable and affordable digital library. The e-books will be made available under the terms of the JISC Model Licence for e-books so that they can be utilised to their full potential in teaching and learning.
Publisher's selection policy
The e-books included in this collection were selected by members of the UK FE community as part of the e-books for FE community consultation. In January 2009 JISC Collections asked the Further Education community to identify which of the e-books submitted by the shortlisted bidders, were the most relevant and would best support FE students.
Cost
There is no charge for subscribing to this collection; the e-books are free of charge. The Learning Skills Council and JISC have funded this collection to all UK FE institutions through August 2014 as part of the e-books for FE project.
No platform/access fee will be charged.
Subscribe to the e-books collection
The e-books for FE Core Collection is licensed through the 31st August 2014. Some of the e-books within the collection will be available after this date but an access fee may apply. For a list of these titles please click here.
For instructions on how to subscribe to and to access the licence, please go to the subscription page.
Functionality and standards compliance
MARC records
Quality-checked MARC21 cataloguing records will be freely available from your college ebrary partner website. Once you have submitted the completed sub-license form an account will be created for you. From here you can access your usage statistics as well as gaining access to the personalized MARC records for your institution.
JISC Collections recommends that all libraries incorporate all the MARC records into their catalogues and provide direct links from the library catalogue and Virtual Learning Environments as it has been shown in several studies that this is essential in raising awareness of the availability of the e-books and encouraging use by students.
ebrary meets XHTML 1.0 standard and is kept up to date with the latest version of XHTML where appropriate.
OpenURL
ebrary is compliant as a target for systems that use OpenURL.
Federated search
ebrary provides full integration of search results with several third-party federated search products, including Webfeat, MuseGlobal, Serial Solutions and Metalib. ebrary also provides an XML API for integration of ebrary search results with other systems.
Search options
The ebrary platform has a range of search options. Simple Search allows users to search keywords e.g. e-book title, text, author name and subject. Users are able to navigate within full-text using hyperlinks. The hyperlinks support in-place sorting and filtering by table of contents, subject, relevancy, publication date, title, or contributor. All table of contents entries also act as clickable links. Users have the ability to land on the first page of a chapter, select chapter by relevancy ranking or click straight through to the search instances within the book.
The ebrary platform has the ability to search within full-text, including within individual e-books, as well as metadata elements. Search options include: full text, title, subject, author/contributor, publication date, LC call#, ISBN, Dewey Decimal number, document language and document type. Boolean and proximity search are also supported. All metadata is fully searchable via the ebrary platform to ensure a high relevance of search results.
Post-search options
All table of contents entries act as clickable links. Users have the ability to land on the first page of a chapter, select chapter by relevancy ranking or click straight through to the search instances within the book. ebrary provides extensive bookshelf functionality, including the ability to:
- Bookmark titles, specific pages or passages
- Highlight and annotate text
- Copy and paste with automatic citation
- Organise bookmarks, highlights and annotation in multiple customisable folders
- Export to RefWorks and EndNote
- Email one's own personalised bookshelves to friends and colleagues
Usage statistics
ebrary provides usage statistics reports in compliance with COUNTER Code of Practice for Books and Reference Works, Release 1. For details refer to http://www.projectcounter.org/cop/books/cop_books_ref.pdf.
Book Reports 2 through 6 are available. Book Report 1 is not applicable as ebrary does not provide titles as single files. Book Report 2 provides title usage data with view, print, copy access combined (each access is considered a successful section request).
COUNTER reports are available for download from the ebrary admin portal for each ebrary channel/college site.
ebrary has no plans to support SUSHI protocols.
Authentication
ebrary offers the following modes of authentication:
- UK Access Management Federation, including Shibboleth and Open ATHENS.
- On campus access via IP range.
- Subject to ebrary's Access Policy: proxy server for off campus, or referring URL.
Institutions wishing to subscribe are strongly advised to join the UK Access Management Federation and implement compliant technologies to provide off campus access, single sign to resources, to identify and define separate groups of users and to assist in the administration of e-resources. This document provides a brief description of the advantages and likely cost and resource implications.
Access via Mobile Devices and Portability
The e-books and ebrary platform can be accessed on a range of mobile devices via ebrary's viewing technology (ebrary QuickView Reader™).
Personalisation of the online resource
Subscribing institutions can customize the ebrary platform to include college/library branding and colour scheme, ebrary can also offer advanced customization of the initial landing page. The customised banner and/or landing pages may be hosted by ebrary or by the institution. Once you have subscribed, please contact siteupdate@ebrary.com to discuss any requirements you may have.
User personalisation
Students and teachers can maintain their own book-lists using ebrary's bookshelf functionality and export them for future reference.
Additionally users can highlight and annotate text, organise bookmarks in multiple customisable folders, export to reference databases such as RefWorks and EndNote, and email one's own personalised bookshelves to friends and colleagues.
Accessibility
Digital materials e.g. e-books delivered through a learning platform/Virtual Learning Environments can be far more accessible to blind and visually impaired (VI) users than hard copy, unmanipulable equivalents, e.g. printed handouts. There is a range of assistive technologies such as screen readers, and the ebrary platform is compatible with these technologies including DAISY and JAWS using traditional keyboard shortcuts. In addition, the ebrary user interface has integrated text to speech functionality removing the need for any additional software.
ebrary will be compliant with the majority of W3C "AA" recommendations and commit to becoming WCAG 2.0 compliant by September 2009. Alistair Mc Naught, Senior Advisor at the JISC TechDis advisory service has created a short video created specially to consider the accessibility benefits and barriers of the ebrary system. It considers the general benefits of e-books and then gives an overview of the accessibility strengths of the ebrary system and how to work around the limitations of the system to maximise benefits for learners.
http://www.techdis.ac.uk/development/videoclips/JISCeBooks4FE.wmv
Library support information
Login URL
Each subscribing institution will be provided with a unique url upon completion of the acceptance of sub-licence form.
Product documentation
More information on ebrary can be found at www.ebrary.com.
Training materials
A range of training materials are available for subscribing institutions:
Administrative and technical support
e-mail: jisc-support@ebrary.com
Phone: 01457 870290
Fax: 01457 820156
Personalisation
Librarians can customise the ebrary interface at an institutional level: by enabling or modifying linking settings, suppressing access to areas of the site, or adding library branding. Please contact jisc-support@ebrary.com for further details.
Trial access
Email us at trial_access@jisc.ac.uk to arrange trial access.
Subscription help
Email subscriptionshelp@jisc.ac.uk.