By Sofie Søndergaard Madsen, Lotte Stehouwer Øgaard, and Kasper Løvschall, Aalborg University Library
Photo: Hjortlund Medier

This is an evidence-based purchasing agreement (also known as an EBA model) where the library pays in advance for full access to titles for a full year. At the end of the year, we analyse usage and decide which titles to purchase on a permanent basis. The titles are available in Primo in the same way as all other library materials.

The titles are in the subject areas of business, finance, commerce and industry, engineering and technology, and parts of the humanities and social sciences. These subject areas have been selected based in part on knowledge of our users' reading habits and needs.

The benefits of EBA's user-driven model are that

• Our users get unrestricted access to a large collection of academic e-books right from the start
• We buy what is in demand. The decision is data-driven because it is based on actual usage patterns
• We get more e-books for the money we put into the agreement compared to individual purchases

The agreement is integrated directly into the library's purchasing system, and the library will continuously monitor usage and make decisions to ensure that the right titles are ultimately added to the collection in perpetuity.

Overall, this means that by 2025 there will be full access through Primo to all e-books in the pool, with titles published between 2022 and 2025. From 2026 we will have full access to the titles we have selected and purchased.

The publisher agreement

Taylor & Francis is one of the major players in the international academic publishing scene, and includes the publisher Routledge. For the University Library, Taylor & Francis is an obvious choice for an agreement as we already buy a lot of individual titles from them. Their subject coverage and high academic standards are a good match for the demand we see from researchers and students at AAU.

The publisher also offers DRM-free access to the titles for an unlimited number of users. This means that the books can be downloaded directly as PDF files. It is very important to us that access to the books is as easy as possible and without too many barriers.