The ebooks for FE project, a national digital library for FE colleges

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The e-books for FE project, a national digital
library for FE colleges
Anna Vernon, Project Manager
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E-books for FE Project-recap

• The e-books for FE project, a national
  digital library for FE colleges
• The e-books for FE Project, funded by the JISC
  and the Learning Skills Council will ensure that
  every FE college in the UK can provide its
  students with a highly relevant, usable and
  accessible digital library. The e-books platform
  and Core Collection of e-books will be available
  free of charge to FE colleges across the UK for 5
  years from May 2009.
• E-books is a topic which is attracting a great
  deal of attention in the mainstream media, with
  the recent release of the Sony e-books reader and
  other devices such as the Amazon Kindle and
  thanks to the LSC through the e-books for FE
  project, the FE sector will be leading the way in
  the adoption of e-books in education.

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Bought by FE colleges
Platform and e-books will be freely available
for 5 years 4 months,
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Why the project?

• FE colleges have expressed a real need for JISC
  Collections to help cater for their diverse
  audiences and meet accessibility requirements
  through e-books.
• E-books have enormous potential as a resource for
  students and practitioners, which is relatively
  untapped. A digital library is similar to a
  physical one in that if a user enters it and
  finds the shelves sparsely filled, they are
  unlikely to return. The current lack of a
  significant number of relevant e-textbooks means
  that students and teachers struggle to build a
  digital library to meet the demand for taught
  course texts.
• A core aim of the project is to get the critical
  mass of e-books the FE sector requires

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Community Consultation -Get Involved

Phenomenal number of titles received in response
to the Invitation to Tender. Over 5000 unique
titles! To assess their relevance JISC
Collections is looking for help from the FE
community in evaluatingthe e-book titles.
Colleges can rank proposed titles in order of
preference through the online consultation. The
e-book titles are divided into following broad
subject areas Arts and humanities, Science
engineering and technology, Health and life
sciences, Education/Childcare, Literature/Literary
studies, Social sciences, Business and
Management, General, Key Skills, Health and
Safety, Education/Teacher Training/Early years
and Vocational.
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Completing the consultation
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Key Dates
December 2008-January 2009 First evaluation by
the Project Board and Technical Advisory Group to
eliminate bids that do not meet licensing or
technical standards. January 2009 to February
2009 Online Community Consultation with FE
colleges. Deadline,13th February 2009 March
2009 Award Contract May 2009 Platform and Core
Collection freely available to FE colleges.
May-September 2009 Embedding and
integration JISC Collections will run nation-wide
road shows to promote the e-books

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Advocacy and Uptake

• Resource discovery-A book or any resource, be it
  electronic or otherwise has no value if it is not
  used.
• One of the main challenges of the project will be
  getting the e-books used by the community,
  community-wide involvement vital.
• Integration in college systems, VLEs reading
  lists essential
• Will require collaboration between content
  providers, library staff and practitioners.
• In May 2009 JISC Collections will monitor usage
  of the Core Collections, share best practice and
  respond to cases of low use
• Not just an exercise in procurement, working
  together with colleges and publishers to leverage
  best value for money and long term to look at
  business models etc.

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Promotion and Publicity
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Contact information

• Anna Vernon
• Tel [phone]
• a.vernon_at_jisc.ac.uk
• http//fe.jiscebooksproject.org/