University Library: What we buy and why – answers to some frequently asked questions

The key thing to note is that we operate under a finite budget allocated to us by the University from which we have to buy resources to support learning, teaching and research across the range of subjects covered here.  This range of subjects keeps expanding (we have added Nursing and Veterinary Science to our portfolio of subjects in recent years for example).  This budget will never be enough to buy everything, therefore we do have to limit what we buy, whilst at the same time trying to ensure that this wide range of subjects and courses have appropriate materials to support them.

Our primary source of material selection for books comes from recommendations from academic staff. This mainly comes from the reading lists prepared by them to support teaching.   In addition to material from reading lists, we also consider purchasing books recommended by academic staff or University students. 

The More Books scheme (https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/is/library-services/morebooks/) is available to students to recommend books for purchase by the library.  When the library decides to purchase print books requested in this way, one standard loan copy will be ordered.  Given what we have already outlined about our budget, there are limitations on this, and these are outlined on the link above, but these are designed to ensure that we can administer the More Books scheme in a manner fair to all our users.

We also spend our Library budget on subscriptions to many journals and databases, again primarily based upon the recommendations of the academic staff at the University, and regularly reviewed by us to ensure they continue to be of relevance to learning, teaching and research here.

How does the Library decide which books and journals to purchase electronically and which to buy in print?

We do operate a ‘Digital First’ policy where the electronic provision of information and materials is preferred to print where it is affordable, appropriate, and advantageous to our users. What we mean by this is that if a resource is available electronically, we will try to acquire it in that format.

However, it is not as easy as you might think to get hold of an e copy of a book. Due to UK copyright law, university libraries cannot simply purchase an e-book in the way an individual can from Amazon for example. We are required to purchase a version licensed specifically for university use. The prices for these e books are not the same either. Some of the barriers we face to purchasing e books are: 

• Sometimes we just can’t get them in an electronic format. Frequently we find that academic books are not available to institutions to license as an e-book.
• If an e-book is available to license by a university it is almost always more expensive, and frequently significantly and prohibitively so. E-book costs for a single user only can often be ten times the cost of the same paper book.
• Price rises are common, and can be sudden and appear arbitrary.
• Licences of e-books are often confusing for both staff and students, and frequently restrictive. There can be a wide range of licences, from single user, three-user, multiple user, and these can change without any clear reason (or accompanying reduction in price).
• Sometimes publishers offer their titles exclusively through an e-textbook model, via third party companies, which licences content for use by specific, very restricted, cohorts of students on an annual basis. Quotes for these are usually hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of times more than a print title, and this must be paid each year for new cohorts of students to gain access. Given our limited budget, these kind of deals are unsustainable across the range of subjects we support.

Where electronic copies of books are unavailable for the above reasons, we purchase physical copies.

We do operate a ‘Digital First’ policy where the electronic provision of information and materials is preferred to print where it is affordable, appropriate, and advantageous to our users. What we mean by this is that if a resource is available electronically, we will try to acquire it in that format.

However, it is not as easy as you might think to get hold of an e copy of a book. Due to UK copyright law, university libraries cannot simply purchase an e-book in the way an individual can from Amazon for example. We are required to purchase a version licensed specifically for university use. The prices for these e books are not the same either. Some of the barriers we face to purchasing e books are: 

• Sometimes we just can’t get them in an electronic format. Frequently we find that academic books are not available to institutions to license as an e-book.
• If an e-book is available to license by a university it is almost always more expensive, and frequently significantly and prohibitively so. E-book costs for a single user only can often be ten times the cost of the same paper book.
• Price rises are common, and can be sudden and appear arbitrary.
• Licences of e-books are often confusing for both staff and students, and frequently restrictive. There can be a wide range of licences, from single user, three-user, multiple user, and these can change without any clear reason (or accompanying reduction in price).
• Sometimes publishers offer their titles exclusively through an e-textbook model, via third party companies, which licences content for use by specific, very restricted, cohorts of students on an annual basis. Quotes for these are usually hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of times more than a print title, and this must be paid each year for new cohorts of students to gain access. Given our limited budget, these kind of deals are unsustainable across the range of subjects we support.

Where electronic copies of books are unavailable for the above reasons, we purchase physical copies.

Given the restrictions of our budget, and the competing demands upon it, we can never hope to hold everything that our users might need.  We therefore collaborate with other  libraries and organizations through our Document Supply Service to provide access to resources not available locally. Obtaining resources from other libraries is a cost-effective alternative to purchasing them, particularly when demand is limited. You can read more about our document supply service here:https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/is/library-services/documentsupply/

Our budget does not give us the capacity to buy copies of a book for each student on any given module or course.  Therefore, when we buy physical copies of material on reading lists, we do so according to a ratio outlined in our Reading List Policy. For essential texts this works out to one copy of a book for every 15 students on a module.

We do monitor the usage of our books and take note of items where there is significant demand building up through requests, and this will trigger us to buy addition copies.  Through this we hope to be able to match demand for these books whilst at the same time prioritising the use of our limited budget to those areas where it is most needed.

We hope this outlines how we acquire material for the library and why we have to apply limits to what we can buy, but we do hope that through these measures, and by continually monitoring the usage of our collections we can ensure that they are cost effective and meet the learning, teaching and research needs of the University.