New eBook collection – Cambridge Books Online

The library service is pleased to announce that it has acquired the Cambridge Books online collection for this academic year. The collection contains over 25,000 Cambridge University Press and affiliated publisher eBook titles and the content encompasses a broad range of subjects including the humanities, social sciences and STM subjects (scientific, technical and medical). The collection is also comprised of a variety of newer and older monographs and coursebooks which we hope will be invaluable to students in their respective disciplines.

How can I access these books online?

All of the books in the Cambridge Books Online collection (CBO) have been loaded on to LibrarySearch alongside our other materials. You can search for ebooks by selecting that option from the drop down menu – below is an example of a CBO book and how to find it:

 If you would like to specifically access the CBO collection itself, you can view the collection on the CBO homepage: http://ebooks.cambridge.org/

Don’t forget to log in using the institutional login button (shown below) if you are off-campus:

What benefits do CBO books offer?

As CUP both own and host the content on their own platform, they can afford to offer several distinct advantages as opposed to other eBook providers:

• There are no limitations on the number of students who can view a book at the same time (concurrency) nor is there a limit on the number of times any student can use elements of a book (usage)
• Students are able to view and save chapters as PDF’s and print them off (normal copyright rules apply)
• There is no DRM (Digital Rights Management) applied to the platform or the content
• Chapter downloads can be read offline and are comptabile with any device which can read PDF’s (ipads, android devices, pc’s, laptops etc) providing that you have a PDF reader installed

Will all of these books be available to use permanently?

No, the most popular titles will be made available in perpetuity in October 2015. This is achieved by using a mechanism offered by Cambridge and some other publishers called evidence based acquisition. The library has invested £56,000 to provide access to the entire CBO collection, at the end of the year we will purchase only the most heavily used titles (based on usage data) up to the level of the investment.

What exactly is the benefit of doing it this way?

Were the library to purchase all the books in the collection to make them permanently available, the cost would be in excess of 2 million pounds. This way we get to offer a very large number of titles to everyone for the whole academic year then cherry pick the most important titles going forward so that we get the best value for money from our investment.