e-books for FE workshop: Project overview

1. e-books for FE workshop: Project overview

2. Why e-books? • Why? There is a demand for e-books from students and their teachers in Further Education which is not being met. • The e-books for FE project aims to help colleges serve their diverse community of learners by providing them with a critical mass of relevant e-books. • Device independent-access via PC and mobile devices • 24/7 access One of the main attractions of e-books is that they can be accessed 24/7. The e-books in the project can be accessed remotely, clear benefits for distance learners, part time students or people who simply prefer not to go to the campus to read material. • Personalisation-users are about to comment upon, ‘tag’ and link to other resources direct from the e-book.

3. Provide 2990 e-book titles • Unlimited concurrent access • Access to the ebrary e-books platform, for five years, free of charge. • The e-books will be made available under the JISC model licence. e.g. Staff and students can incorporate parts in teaching learning materials whether electronic or paper. This includes course packs, presentations, VLEs, mobile devices, project work.

4. The Titles • The Core Collection contains e-books from a variety of publishers, including Heinemann, Hodder & Stoughton, Blackwell, A & C Black, Springer. The e-books available cover subjects as diverse as Fashion Design and Software Engineering, Heath and Social Care and Automobile Electronics, Beauty Therapy and Practical Lambing. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/jiscfe • The e-books in the Core Collection support taught course students in a broad range of subject areas • Arts and Humanities, Business Management and General, Education & Childcare, Health & Life Sciences, ICT, Literature & Literary Studies, Travel & Tourism, Key Skills inc Maths, Science & Engineering, Social Sciences and Vocational. • A full list of titles can now be found on the JISC Collections website or in the e-books licence.

5. How did we choose these titles? • Initial dialogue with FE Colleges in May 2008, to establish demand, levels of current take up and priorities. • Briefing meeting with publishers and suppliers to tell them your needs • Invitation to Tender, with very strict requirements and emphasis on FE relevance Community Consultation • 3 week consultation, promoted through the RSC’S and via the e-books for FE, COfHE and JISC mailing lists. 80,000 individual ‘votes’, demonstrates demand for this project. • Excellent spread across JISC bands and subject categories. Significantly more interest in the vocational category. What you asked for! • Clear demand for vocational titles • High cost titles e.g., Electrical Installations Calculations: Volume 1 7e, The Building Regulations, BTEC National Beauty Therapy. • If the titles were not ranked then they are not included • Catered for smaller and specialist colleges

6. Who will have access Every FE college in the UK How do we define FE college? • The majority of funding for this project is provided by the Learning Skills Council and therefore only FE institutions may subscribe. • However students registered at FE institution but accessing the e-books at a University can access the e-books. • Teachers and library staff responsible for these registered students may also access the e-books. • Therefore, if an HE institution is undertaking an FE course on behalf of an FE institution, the students and teachers of those students, can access the e-books catalogue. • If in doubt please contact Anna Vernon a.vernon@jisc.ac.uk

7. Equity of access: Extending access to your library e-books can have disproportionate benefits for learners with disabilities and students working from home Why are e-books important for inclusion? People with a range of access needs find traditional text books difficult. Literacy issues might affect people with low reading ages, people working in a second language or people with specific learning difficulties. Books may be physically difficult to manipulate for some users and for others the text size and contrast will present barriers. Books in electronic format may allow users to: • personalise and adapt the text size and colour • have the text read aloud by synthetic speech • have instant access to referencing tools such as dictionaries • copy/paste text into notes, reducing the physical demand of typing. More information on user access needs: Simulating different disabilities – www.techdis.ac.uk/simdis Short video clip on e-books/inclusion - http://tinyurl.com/ebookvideo

8. Making the most of your digital library • JISC Collections will work in partnership to promote the collection, encourage use in VLE’s, library catalogues etc. so they are used to their full potential. • e-books should be treated as a raw material to be exploited alongside a variety of other resources- however and WHEREVER learners want to learn. • e-books and learning technologies should not just be limited to a small group of enthusiasts • Opportunity for the FE sector to shape the provision of e-resources and to go beyond providing handouts to creating a dynamic environment where students can personalise, archive, tag annotate and share content. The main challenge for the project will be getting the e-books used.

9. Tools to help • MARC records • The MARC cataloguing records for the Core Collection have been checked and will be made freely available. JISC Collections recommends that all Libraries incorporate all the MARC records into their catalogues and provide direct links from the catalogue and VLE as it has been shown in several studies that this is essential in raising awareness of the availability of the e-books and encouraging use by students. • Video exemplars • Teachers are creating videos to demonstrate how the Core Collections can be used, classes in Moodle using ebooks across 3 subject areas; • Promotional Material • Leaflets, presentations, discussion forums. • Functionality • A range of training materials are available for subscribing institutions on the ebrary website. • Access Management • JISC Access Management outreach team there to help • http://www.jisc.ac.uk/federation.html