WiLS vendor-partner, Cambridge University Press, has made an exciting evidence-based acquisitions offer. WiLS will form a buying group for member libraries interested in CUP’s Full ebook collection or either of their sub-collections. At the minimum, EBA participants will get 10% off the list price, but depending on group size, the discount could reach as high as 60% off! To kick off the program and to showcase the product, Cambridge will be hosting webinars for WiLS members on April 24th and May 3rd.
What is an evidence-based acquisition program?
Evidence-based acquisition (EBA) is a sales model whereby libraries gain one-year access to a full library of ebooks for a fixed price. At the end of the year, each library chooses titles to keep permanently based on how much they paid to participate. There are several advantages to such a model. First, the library has extensive usage data so that they can pick titles that were well used by their patrons. Second, unlike most ebook subscriptions, you have something to keep at the end of this process. Finally, if the program works well, we’ll repeat it in 2019 and beyond, offering an opportunity to continue to expand your library. Read more about Cambridge’s EBA program here.
Details about the WiLS offer
WiLS has received pricing for all academic library members, including a baseline 10% discount. However, the more libraries that participate the greater the discount becomes. For instance, if three libraries buy-in, everyone gets a 20% discount. The discount level continues to climb, topping out at 60% with 20 or more participants. The total number of participating libraries in any collection contributes to the discount level. To facilitate calculating the final discount, the enrollment period will close in mid-June and access will commence on July 1st. As with all WiLS products, your library can arrange to be invoiced before or after July 1 to accommodate your budget. In July of 2019, participants will have 30 days to select their permanently owned titles. Access will stay on during that period, so members are actually getting 13 months for the price of 12.
Collections included
Cambridge is offering this EBA program for their full collection of over 34,000 ebooks (list value over $5M). However, if your library would be more interested in a subset, there are two available: Humanities & Social Sciences (26,000+ titles) and Science, Technology & Medicine (8,000+ titles). The only exclusions are Cambridge Companions and Cambridge Histories Online. Title lists for all three of these collections are attached to this post for download.
Next Steps
To learn more about the collection and the offer, plan to attend one of our webinars. Contact Jeff Brunner (brunnerj@wils.org) for your library’s price quote. Initial quotes will be based on the minimum discount level until we have at least three committed libraries at that level. We’ll notify everyone when the discount level gets better, with the final locked in discount level being set in mid-June.