JISC Collections

JISC Collections negotiates, manages and acquires licence agreements for online resources that will support education and research and stakeholder requirements. In order to provide value and bring efficiencies to the academic sector the licenses must offer value for money and allow users to adapt the online resources to create teaching and learning materials within a personalised e-learning environment. This can be achieved though a central negotiation and national licensing process that saves institutions and content owners time and money. A recently published value for money report outlined precisely how much time and money is saved through national licensing arrangements. A sample analysis of some 22 resources which JISC provided through national agreement in the year 2004-05 revealed that the total savings to the education community through national agreements for these resources amounted to over £26m. With the annual costs for these resources less than £1m, such figures suggest that for every £1 spent on securing national agreements, the savings amounted to more than £26.

The same report also analysed the time saved by the use of e-resources compared to the use of paper-based equivalents, interlibrary loans, institutionally held CD-ROMs, visits to libraries at alternative locations, etc., which all have time, cost and efficiency implications. These costs can be estimated, said the report, through savings in staff time gained through the use of e-resources.

Using independent and publicly available figures, these access figures translate into efficiency savings for university staff active in teaching and research of nearly £156m in 2004-05. This suggests that the education and research community is gaining some 1.4 million person/days by using e-resources rather than paper-based equivalents. Such a scenario suggests that for every £1 spent on e-resource provision, the return to the community in value of time saved in information gathering is at least £18.

JISC Collections aims to support and contribute to policy developments in e-learning and e-research by listening to the needs of and acting as a central point of contact for the academic the publishing sectors. Collaborative partnerships enable effective communications and allow JISC Collections to create new and innovative licensing and business models in line with e-learning, e-research and publishing developments.

The current collections strategy is under review.