UM Library has a deal with the publisher Taylor & Francis (T&F) to access e-books made available by using Evidence Based Acquisition. The resources are accessible until March 2023, after which the library will select resources from the collection for permanent use.

What is an EBA agreement?

An Evidence Based Acquisition agreement provides access to a large package of e-books for an extended period, against a predetermined budget. It is a cost-effective way to evaluate and acquire content that meets the information needs of our UM users. After the agreement period is over, the library receives an overview of the usage of the e-books and can select the ones they want to keep in the collection within the pre-agreed sum. This purchase decision will be based on both usage throughout the access period and other criteria, e.g. prioritise for literature used in education.

What sources does this agreement cover?

The EBA is financed from the Central collection (CC) budget that is available for cross-faculty collection building. During twelve-month all members of the UM community will have access to titles in several CC subject areas, for example, communication science, environmental science, education, social sciences, sociology, language, technical sciences, science and culture, mathematics.

With a deposit of £10,000, we get access to titles worth £200,000 for a year. This concerns a small part of the total T&F e-books collection and some exclusions apply. For example, textbooks with DRM (digital rights management) restrictions are not accessible. DRM regulates how online resources can be accessed, downloaded, copied and printed by end-users.

Invitation to try this T&F EBA agreement

You can search for individual titles with LibSearch, the discovery tool of the library. Your user experience is as if the library already owns the book, with unlimited simultaneous use, and the ability to download and print.

At the end of the deal (March 2023), based on usage and feedback from the users, the library will select the titles best suited for its collection, worth £10,000.00, for permanent use.

Need help?

In case you need help accessing and using the collection or you have a question regarding this EBA, please contact Ask Your Librarian. You can also consult the guide ‘How to use T&F e-books’.

Author: University Library

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