We aim to build collections that reflect a diverse academic community and breadth of scholarship, and to support the University’s flexible and inclusive approach to teaching. To this end, we aim to continue to fill gaps in our current online collections, meet student expectations for 24/7 remote access to key materials, and address previously under-represented areas and revisions to the academic curricula.
Since March 2020, there have been considerable increases in ebook provision for both taught students and researchers across MSD and MPLS. Additional funds were made available to us during the COVID-19 pandemic, which were used to provide enhanced access to ebooks as well as expand ejournal access.
This expansion of ebook access included:
- large collections from major publishers aimed at students and researchers across science and biomedicine
- one-off purchases of individual texts available in perpetuity
- some individual titles which require annual subscriptions
These include key individual ebook titles on undergraduate reading lists or individually requested, and also major reference works such as Encyclopaedia of the Life Sciences and Birds of the World. We have also acquired access to over 60,000 additional online monographs from the Springer and Elsevier ebook platforms.
There has also been a substantial increase in uptake of ORLO (Oxford Reading Lists Online) in MSD and MPLS, and staff have made great efforts to identify material newly available online, and online alternatives to reading list texts only available in print.
Very high usage levels are being reported for some these new titles and collections. For example, there were 8,000 chapter downloads from Berg’s Biochemistry online in just 6 months, and the big increases in downloads from our Elsevier and Springer ebook collections can be seen in these graphs:
New publisher ebook collection subscriptions in science and medicine:
MSD ebooks now available:
- 265 key individual ebook titles in direct support of undergraduate reading lists – titles catalogued individually on SOLO
Packages:
MPLS ebooks now available:
- 450 key individual ebook titles in direct support of undergraduate reading lists – titles catalogued individually on SOLO
Packages:
New databases and reference works:
Springer ebook collections purchased in perpetuity:
- Earth and Environmental Science (2017 and 2020-21)* – titles catalogued individually on SOLO
- Mathematics and Statistics (2017-21) – titles catalogued individually on SOLO
- Chemistry and Materials Science (2017-21) – titles catalogued individually on SOLO
- Springer Medicine (2017-2021) – titles catalogued individually on SOLO
Note:
All these resources are accessible via SOLO when logged in using your SSO. Direct links to publishers’ platforms should also work when logged into Bodleian Libraries and Departmental computers, or when using the University VPN.
*2018 and 2019 already purchased