What was the goal of this EBA?

The goal of starting an alternative acquisition model was to provide access to a large package of e-books for an extended period while staying within a predetermined budget.

The EBA was financed from the Central collection budget that is available for cross-faculty collection building. Therefore, this EBA was focused on acquiring e-books in subject areas that were relevant to the Central collection subject areas: communication science, environmental science, education, social sciences, sociology, language, technical sciences, science, culture, and mathematics.

This EBA allowed us to offer a wide range of content to our users without the need to purchase individual titles upfront. By assessing usage patterns, we could make more informed purchasing decisions and ensure that we were acquiring content that met the information needs of our users.
Overall, the goal of the EBA program was to provide a more efficient and user-focused approach to acquiring content.

End of EBA access

Now the agreement period is over, we decided which titles to purchase and keep in perpetuity, with a total value up to the fee already paid. The selection process for the e-books added to the permanent collection was based on usage data and other criteria, e.g. priorities for literature used in education, to ensure that the e-books added to the permanent collection were valuable to our users.

58 titles were selected to be purchased and added to the permanent collection.
The selected e-books are retraceable into LibSearch for seamless navigation.

Conclusion

Based on the evaluation of the data collected by T&F, we can conclude that offering e-books through this EBA with T&F has proved successful. By using EBA, where purchases of e-books are determined based on actual usage, we have been able to optimise and update the collection of e-books. This has led to a better selection of e-books that meet the needs and interests of our user base.

While there is no permanent access to the titles that were not purchased after the end of the agreement period, the Library’s decision to expand the breadth of the e-book collection and provide access to e-books anytime without usage restrictions is still a significant benefit for users and our collection remains relevant and useful over time.

Questions?

For all questions regarding this EBA and more information on our collections and services please contact us via Ask your librarian.