ScienceDirect are offering a number of e-book collections using their Evaluation Based Selection (EBS) purchasing model. The way this works is that you get to choose a particular collection of interest, we pay what they call an EBS access fee up front and have access to the whole collection for 12 months. When 12 months is up, you get to select which e-book titles you would like to keep (up to the value of the original EBS access fee we paid).

Example: the Engineering 2011 collection (53 titles) has a value of $US8603. The EBS access fee for this is $US2581. If we pay $US2581 upfront we get access to all 53 titles for 12 months. When 12 months is up, we get to pick and choose titles within the Engineering 2011 collection up to the value of $US2581.

Link to spreadsheet detailing the collections on offer (xls)

The first worksheet (1. Uni Canterbury SDOL EBS) shows you the details of the collections on offer, the total number of books in each collection (column C), the total value of the collection (column F) and the EBS access fee for each collection (column J). The second worksheet (2. All S&T eBooks titles) contains a list of all the individual titles (column B) within each collection (column F) and the price of each of those titles (column G). Usage statistics across the first 12 months will be made available which can help inform decisions about which titles we end up picking and choosing.

Recommendations on collections we could purchase are welcome, send the details through to acquisitions@libr.canterbury.ac.nz. This could be a useful option to consider if you are looking to use up money in book budgets that are currently underspent.

Could you discuss with me first before sharing the pricing information with anyone who is not a member of University of Canterbury library staff – if it’s an LLO for example that’s fine but it’s really to just be aware that this information is usually supplied to us in confidence.

Thanks

Tim Stedman