The library has been continuously expanding its range of digital literature for many years. Since the beginning of 2021, it has also benefited from the "E-Books.NRW" initiative, under which the State Ministry of Culture and Science provides universities in North Rhine-Westphalia with special funding for the procurement of e-books. A special campaign has now added 665 new titles via the E-Book Central platform.
The highlight: users were able to decide which titles from the package were ultimately purchased permanently . How was this implemented? Quite simply - the platform registered usage behavior in relation to the individual e-books from a package comprising around 40,000 titles in total. This included works published by various publishers between 2020 and 2023. If a title was read or browsed online for more than 5 minutes at a time, this automatically triggered a purchase by the library. The same applied to titles that were downloaded. Users were unaware of this when researching and reading. In library jargon, this is called "Demand-Driven Acquisition" or DDA for short.
Campaign was a complete success
"In this way, we were able to involve students and employees of the UAS directly and according to their literature needs for studying and teaching in the expansion of our e-book collection," explains Christiane Brammer, librarian in the library's e-book team. The campaign ran from June 4 to November 9, 2023, after which the 665 titles that were used according to the above criteria will be permanently available to all users. All new e-books can be easily accessed via the RiO literature search engine. There is something for all faculties in terms of content.
There was a special feature for works that exceeded the predetermined price limit of 150 euros. No automatic purchase was triggered for these, but interested users could request the purchase from the library after reading for 5 minutes. Many users also made use of this option. The library was able to fulfill some of their requests, and many of the e-books in question were already available via other channels. In rare cases, requests were made for titles that were too expensive or too specialized, which unfortunately could not be purchased. As the campaign was primarily intended to benefit FH members, requests from external users were also rejected.
Christiane Brammer has positive feedback on this demand-oriented way of expanding the collection: "The campaign made it possible for students and employees from all faculties to benefit. Titles were selected for purchase almost every day. From our point of view, the campaign was very successful."