Archives for the month of: July, 2012

On Friday 13th July John Tuck, Helen Guile and I went to Birmingham to attend the Library Systems Programme start-up meeting.  This provided a great opportunity to meet each other, our JISC Programme Manager Ben Showers and representatives from all the other funded projects in this strand, as well as representatives from key individuals carrying out related work in this important and rapidly-changing area of library development.

Over the last few days we have been reflecting on what we want to achieve from our work on E-BASS25 and have arrived at the following desired outcomes:

  • We will have a clear idea of the current e-books and more specifically the patron-driven acquisition (PDA) landscape in the UK
  • We will know what issues consortia face when seeking to procure e-books at present
  • Members of the M25 Consortium and the wider community of academic and research libraries will have much clearer guidance on the challenges relating to the consortial acquisition of e-books using a patron-driven model and on how to embark upon consortial acquisition
  • The Project Team will have worked together to answer and address many of the questions raised by institutions and consortia about acquiring e-books.
  • We will have produced a wide range of supporting materials in the form of reports, briefing papers and toolkits and they will be available to those who need them.

At the end of the project we will conduct an evaluation, written up as a project document.  This will chart our progress against a range of success criteria, including:

  • Delivery of project outputs/deliverables in line with project plan and budget
  • Dissemination of outputs in line with communications plan
  • Contributions to JISC events and related JISC calls, as per project plan
  • Contributions to wider initiatives such as KB+; take up and dissemination by stakeholders of toolkit/guidelines.

As part of the programme of work we will be seeking views from the community as to what other outcomes would be desirable.  However, if you already have further ideas about what you’d like to see from E-BASS25 then please leave a comment or contact me by email.

Dominic Tate – Project Manager

 

Welcome!  This is the project blog for E-BASS25 ( E-Book Aquisition as a Shared Service in M25).  Firstly, many thanks to JISC for funding this project, which I am sure will provide some really valuable findings and advice on the patron-driven purchasing of e-books on a consortium basis.

E-BASS25 is a project led by Royal Holloway, University of London (on behalf of the M25 Consortium of Academic Libraries), with partners at Kingston UniversityJISC Collections and the Science Museum (on behalf of the Museum Librarians and Archivists Group).  In addition, we are looking forward to working with SCONULLUPCSUPCSero Consulting and the University of Surrey.

The project seeks to define practical guidelines and tools which will enable libraries to work together with providers and purchasing consortia to deliver the best possible return on investment and the highest level of efficiency in this priority area of library provision.

As e-books continue to develop as an important format and resource in libraries for students and researchers, it has become increasingly important to define best practice and cost-effectiveness in managing their acquisition and delivery in a library context.  This project focuses on the purchasing of e-books on a consortium basis and will deliver considerable benefits in terms of engagement with libraries, the dissemination of guidelines around e-book acquisition and a more coordinated approach across the various groups involved.

The project has ambitious aims to shape policies and guidelines that will facilitate easy and cost-effective processes around patron-driven e-book acquisition within library consortia.

More updates on this project, including the finalized project plan will follow soon and this blog will be a key source of information as the project progresses, so watch this space!

Dominic Tate – Project Manager, E-BASS25