A number of us are having increasing concerns about VitalSource as a platform for eBooks. I would like to ask that we please do not recommend or buy any more eBooks from VitalSource until we get some satisfactory responses from VitalSource and the publishers who are insisting on using this platform.  Our concerns include usability, their DRM and more recently privacy of student data they are collecting when students create an account with them.  Hope to get some clearer responses soon but I am seriously thinking we should blacklist this provider and manage out the handful of titles we have purchased with them.  We will be passing on our concerns to the publishers who are using them as well.

As mentioned at the session yesterday with subject librarians, we now have access to Faculty Select, a new tool from EBSCO which provides a single search interface for finding open access textbooks.

Access Faculty Select

We are in the experimenting phase and we continue to work with EBSCO to iron out a few things with Faculty Select.

What’s our interest in Faculty Select? 

We are keen to promote the benefits of open access generally.  This was a tool we heard about last year and thought it sounded interesting and worth experimenting with.  Other reasons include:

• Textbook affordability for students and reducing barriers in textbook access for students
• Rising costs of eTextbooks for libraries
• Unwillingness of some publishers to sell their eTextbooks to libraries
• UC’s interest in moving into MOOCs

How you can help

• Have a play with Faculty Select and send us your feedback, ideas or questions.  If you are just testing/playing please put [Testing] after your name in the submission form to indicate to LAC staff that you don’t actually want to proceed
• Include Faculty Select in your conversations with academics as an option for sourcing open textbook content (encourage exploring open alternatives to the traditional textbook model generally)

More information

• EBSCO product information page
• Promotional video

This coming Friday the Information Resources Advisory Group (subgroup of Library Committee) will be meeting to discuss the feedback received in the recent review of subscriptions.

Our Information Resources Working Group has met and is making recommendations to IRAG regarding which subscriptions to keep and which ones could be cancelled.  Once IRAG has met we will send out a revised list of subscriptions as ‘proposals to cancel’ and there will be a further opportunity to comment.

Many thanks for all the feedback received so far.  New subscription recommendations will be considered at a later date once the value of cancellations and savings elsewhere in the budget are known.