The national e-books observatory project is about exploring impacts, observing behaviours and developing new models to stimulate the e-books market, and to do all this in a managed environment.
Why the project
- There is a demand for course texts including textbooks in e-format from UK HE course taught students and their teachers which is not being met
- E-book publishers are nervous about providing course texts online as there is a lack of evidence about demand and concerns over impacts on print sales
- JISC Collections, e-book publishers, librarians and aggregators are unsure about what are the most realistic and sustainable pricing and licensing models for providing students with online access to course texts
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Project aims
- To licence a collection of e-books that are highly relevant to UK HE course taught students in four discipline areas:
- Business and Management Studies
- Engineering
- Medicine (not mental health or nursing)
- Media Studies
- To evaluate the use of the course text e-books though deep log analysis and analyse the impact of the free at the point of use course text e-books upon publisher, aggregator and library processes
- To transfer knowledge acquired in the project to publishers, aggregators and libraries to help stimulate a course text e-books market that has appropriate business and licensing models