More Multidisciplinary e-Books: ebrary

As HKU Libraries' NetLibrary collection increased multi-fold to about 10,000 items in the Spring of 2003, it became obvious that if a larger collection of e-books was available, the number of users and the frequency of usage would increase dramatically. The challenge was to develop this large collection in a relatively short time and at a reasonable cost per e-book.

In July 2003, the library took a leap forward towards this goal by subscribing to the Academic Complete collection of e-books offered by the company ebrary. Only available on a subscription basis at the time, ebrary's cost per book was a tiny fraction of the list price.

The company's Academic Complete is a multi-disciplinary collection of about 10,000 titles from over 100 publishers. There is little overlap between this collection and HKU Libraries' existing NetLibrary collection, but most of all, ebrary offers the benefit of unlimited simultaneous access by multiple users.

HKU Libraries' ebrary search screen (click to enlarge)

The HKU Libraries offered the service on a trial run for one month and the decision to subscribe was supported by positive feedback from users. As one person wrote:
I am a first-year MBBS student, and I personally find this service very useful. The service allows students to access the latest editions of books in a very convenient and cost-effective manner.

A page from the book Budgeting for Managers by Sid Kemp (click to enlarge)

The collection has since grown to about 30,000 titles from over 200 publishers. The full range of academic disciplines is covered, with over 20% of the collection in history and the humanities; followed by about 15% in the social and behavioral sciences; and then business, marketing and economics. Each month, HKU users have accessed on average over 2,000 e-books and viewed over 50,000 pages.

A page from the book Living on an Active Earth: Perspectives on Earthquake Science by the Committee on the Science of Earthquakes. Many science books depend on figures and diagrams (click to enlarge).

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