UK academic institutions can now access Cambridge ebook collections via an Evidence Based Acquisition (EBA) model agreed through Jisc Collections, an organisation which works on behalf of UK education.

Under this EBA model, institutions are given trial access to extensive online collections of Cambridge and partner monographs, before they make decisions about which titles to buy access to in perpetuity. The evidence to support decision making is supplied in the form of usage data from the trial, indicating which titles are the most popular within the institution during the period.

EBA has several advantages over other ebook collection purchasing models, not least in that it allows the institutional library, which has expertise in managing acquisition, a key role in selecting resources. EBA also opens up a wider selection of titles to the reader, and enables purchasing decisions to be matched precisely to end user preference.

Additional customer benefits in the Cambridge EBA model are that newly published titles are added to the chosen collection on a monthly basis during the trial, and ebooks from Cambridge partner publishers are also included. You can see a full list of our partner publishers here.

All the collections are hosted on Cambridge Books Online (CBO) and University Publishing Online (UPO).

How it works
» Institutions can choose 6 or 12 month trial access to all Cambridge and partner monographs or selected subject collections.

» Payment is made before the trial according to the JISC banding for each institution.

» Access is opened and usage measured to help inform purchasing decisions.

» Under the 12 month model, libraries decide 33% of their ebook purchases by the end of the 7th month and the remaining ebook purchases by the end of the 13th month – in both instances after the delivery of usage reports.

» Under the 6 month model libraries make all their ebook purchases by the end of the 7th month, again informed by usage.

» After the agreement has ended, institutions are able to make additional payments, if they wish to purchase further titles in perpetuity. They can also request to begin another EBA trial under the same or different content model.

Further information
More information is available from Jisc at: www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/Catalogue/RelatedResources/index/1626

If you are a UK librarian and would like to discuss the EBA option, via email, on the phone or in person, please contact your usual Cambridge colleague. Alternatively please email us at library.sales@cambridge.org

Outside the UK
EBA is also available as a purchasing model in other countries, although the exact details may differ. Please get in touch if you’d like to know more.

Please email us at online@cambridge.org in the Americas, or library.sales@cambridge.org in the Rest of the World.