Librarians

Since the launch of the Cambridge Higher Education platform in 2020 we have been listening to and acting on feedback from customers. Through this feedback we know that managing textbooks with many revised editions can cause issues for students, instructors, and librarians. Given our commitment to responding to customer feedback and ensuring that institutions have access to the most up-to-date digital content to support teaching and learning, we have introduced a new policy for managing old editions of textbooks on the platform.

The new policy will mean that when an edition of a textbook has been superseded by a new edition, it will be withdrawn – but only after a delay of at least 12 months. We will manage these withdrawals annually every July, to reduce disruption as much as possible. We will signpost upcoming changes directly on the title pages of the platform.

Changes in July 2023

Titles that have a newer edition available, published before July 2022, will be withdrawn.

We have also updated the titles that will be withdrawn a year later, in July 2024 to display a message on their pages.

Changes from July 2024

Titles that have a newer edition available published between July 2022 and June 2023, will be withdrawn. We expect this to be between 20 and 30 titles.

On the date the change is made we will communicate the list of titles that will be withdrawn the following July.

For institutions with collection access

There is no action to be taken as collection customers have access to all titles in their subject areas (including new editions as they are published). We will provide a MARC-delete file for the withdrawn title list.

For institutions with access to individual titles

Although we do not have a facility for managing this automatically, we are happy for customers who subscribe to one edition of a title to have access to a newer edition as well, without charge. If any institution has a subscription to an ISBN that is withdrawn, we will proactively switch on access to the new edition to ensure continuity of access.