Librarian FAQs
As questions come in from librarians about the launch of the e-books, licensing, the sub-licence agreement form and the deep log analysis they will be placed up here with the answers. If you have other questions please do contact Caren (c.milloy@jisc.ac.uk) or call the JISC Collections helpdesk on 01993 880044.
Licensing Questions:
1. Do I have to subscribe to both the MyiLibrary and Wolters Kluwer agreements?
No, you can subscribe to just one agreement.
2. Are Further Education institutions able to subscibe?
The funding for this project is HEFCE capital funding and therefore only Higher Education institutions can subscribe. BUT…the definition of Authorised User in the MyiLibrary and Wolters Kluwer licences allows for students that are REGISTERED at a Higher Education institution to access the e-books and it allows for teachers and library staff responsible for these registered students to access the e-books. Therefore, if an FE institution is undertaking an HE course on behalf of an HE institution, the students and teachers of those students, are allowed to access the e-books with their Athens username and password as provided by the HE institution.
Please note that this is only for FE institutions that are running the course on behalf of the HE institution and where the students are registered students of the Higher Education institution. If this is the case, the FE institution should contact the Higher Education institution and ask them to subscribe and then provide the registered students and relevant teachers with an Athens username and password.
3. Reading through the sub-licence agreement I note that a responsibility of the sub-licensee is to “use all reasonable efforts to promote the availability of the licensed material to authorised users”. We will of course add MARC records to our catalogue and promote as much as we can but don’t have budget to produce posters, bookmarks etc. Will JISC Collections provide promotional materials institutions can use?
Yes, JISC Collections is going to be providing subscribing institutions with some tools to help promote the project and the e-books included. A promotions pack is currently being created that will include customisable text for placement on library websites, presentations that can be given at meetings to staff, text for emails to go to the academics in the subject areas and so on. When the pack is ready, it will be sent out to librarians on a memory stick. The pack will also include information on how to access the platforms and how to use the platforms. As the materials included will be customisable, you can amend them to promote all the e-books in your collections if you would like.
4. Do I have to fill in all the contact details fields in the sub-licence agreement form?
Yes please. Having the correct contact information will help us to contact the correct person depending on the nature of the query. The deep log analysis team require a contact to collect the print circulation data from and also to help them circulate user surveys. The MARC record contact is to allow EDINA to send updates about the records through to and the Head of Library contact is required to allow JISC Collections to contact someone about the licence if they are not already the primary contact.
Platform Questions:
5. Will instiotutions have to pay ab access fee to access the e-books on the MyiLibrary and Wolters Kluwer Books@Ovid platforms?
If you are a current subscriber to a collection at MyiLibrary or Wolters Kluwer/Ovid you will continue to pay your current access fees. No further charge will be made to you to access the e-books being made available as part of this project.
If you are not a current subscriber to the Wolters Kluwer/Ovid or MyiLibrary platform, you will not be charged any access fees to access the e-books being licensed as part of this project.
6. Will the e-books be in a separate section?
If you do not subscribe to any MyiLibrary or Wolters Kluwer/Ovid collections your users will only see the e-books in this project. If you currently subscribe to collections with these aggregators, the e-books being licensed through the project will be seen with, and will be cross searchable with, your other subscribed e-book collection.
7. Will users be able to cross search with the other e-books we have subscribed to through MyiLibrary or Wolters Kluwer/Ovid?
Yes, the e-books will be combined automatically with your existing collection and will be cross searchable.
8. The e-books involved in the project are only available on the MyiLibrary and Ovid platforms and we use NetLibrary and publisher platforms such as Taylor & Francis. Is JISC Collections considering extending the free titles to other platforms?
Originally JISC Collections did wish for the e-books to be made available on as many platforms as possible but due to the official tender process and the results of the community consultation, the e-books were licensed via two aggregators. This made it more difficult in terms of making the e-books available on more than one platform due to publisher agreements with the chosen aggregators. JISC Collections recognises that the MyiLibrary and the Ovid platforms may not be everyone’s preferred platforms but we have ensured that there are no access fees so that there are no cost barriers to an institution accessing these e-books. If the publishers themselves wish to make the e-books that are included in the project available on other platforms, they are free to do so but this is a business decision for the publishers to make.
9. If we want to purchase additional e-books from MyiLibrary and Wolters Kluwer / Ovid, will these e-books be shown alongside the e-books available in the project?
Yes, if you decide to buy other e-books from these platform providers they will be shown with the e-books licensed as part of the project. If you already have an account with MyiLibrary or Ovid, the e-books licensed for the project will be seen along side your current collection and will be cross-searchable. If you have never subscribed to MyiLibrary, for example, you will only see the e-books licensed as part of the project.
MARC records:
10. How do I access the MARC records?
Access is through NEOCaR – this is via Athens Authentication. Your Athens site rep will need to add NEOCaR to the list of authenticated resources. EDINA will provide more information on this. Please see http://edina.ac.uk/neocar/ for further information.
11. My university has courses that suit most of these e-books but there are no Engineering courses. We had thought that we would only acquire MARC records for the non-Engineering titles and leave the users to discover these titles if they wished via the MyiLibrary interface. Is part of the project measuring accessibility and if so would you prefer that we catalogue the Engineering titles even though they may be little used?
The MARC records will be available in one download through NEOCaR but until NEOCaR is further developed they will not be available for download by subject. JISC Collections recommends that even if your university does not run a course in Engineering, that you download the MARC records anyway and input them into your catalogue. The project will be looking at how users discover the e-books so it would actually be very interesting to see if, at a university where there are no Engineering courses, the students discover the e-books at all and if they do, do they use them even if they are not directly related to their course.
Deep Log Analsys (DLA):
12. I note that institutions are invited to participate in the Deep Log Analysis but not required to do so. If a site decides not to participate, is it still necessary to nominate a DLA contact on the sub-licence?
All institutions that sign up to the sub-licence agreement will be participating in the Deep Log Analysis (DLA) study. This is a project that requires your cooperation and we do require a DLA contact. The sub-licence agreement, in section 5 says that institutions will:
- 5.1.2 provide CIBER, on an quarterly basis, with the print circulation data for the same Licensed Material titles if held by the Sub-Licensee;
- 5.1.3 use best efforts to comply with requests from CIBER to circulate and gather feedback from Authorised Users;
If you have the print version of any of the e-books included in the project in your library we would like libraries to send your circulation figures to CIBER so that they can see if the availability of e-books had an impact on your print circulation figures.
The sub-licence also asks that librarians work with CIBER. This involves answering surveys, circulating surveys to staff and students and helping them to gather additional feedback. This is ‘best efforts’ as we know that it will be difficult to get feedback from all staff etc.
This level of participation is requested as part of the licence and is core to the gathering of the evidence base that will inform furture models and the e-books market.
Institutions that are interested may also become case study institutions. This will involve more time as interviews and focus groups will be held within your institution. If you would like to be a case study institution please email Caren on c.milloy@jisc.ac.uk
For more details on what is required of librarians as part of the DLA study, please read the brief overview of the DLA work plan.