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Policies E-Book Value Statement

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Overview

As one of the foremost public academic research libraries in North America and a member of the ten-campus University of California system, UCLA Library has the responsibility and the capacity to shape the scholarly publishing landscape in ways that are responsive to its primary users' needs and that steward collections funding most effectively.

Increasingly e-books can provide essential content for use in teaching, learning and research for UCLA students, faculty and scholars. However, the still-evolving e-book market lacks standardized business and use models. The Library seeks to develop that marketplace in ways that support UCLA's core values and the university's mission. The following statements of principle reflect the applicability of these values to the e-book marketplace.

Research and Instruction

  • Licenses must not infringe on fair use (17 U.S.C. § 107).
  • Faculty, students and researchers need and expect access to e-book content for course reserves, course management systems and course packs.
  • The use of an e-book for a course reading requires that it be simultaneously accessible by an unlimited number of users.
  • E-books must maintain the integrity and consistency of scholarly content with print.

Scholarly Communication

  • UCLA scholars expect and need the ability to borrow e-books via interlibrary loan, in a way that is comparable to historic educational usage of print interlibrary loan. Conversely, the Library must be able to loan e-books to other institutions as part of its scholarly mission.
  • UCLA users routinely engage in scholarly sharing with their students and colleagues, and licenses must not hinder that practice.

Positive User Experience

  • Adequate metadata and interoperability must be provided, to allow users to discover and access e-books in ways including through library catalogs, format- and discipline-specific public portals and other search interfaces preferred by users.
  • Users should be presented with a list of subscribed titles, rather than having to maneuver through a lengthy list of all titles available through a provider's website.
  • Content must be accessible across a variety of platforms and devices and must evolve with the emergence of new technologies.
  • Faculty, students and researchers must be able to print, copy, save and annotate e-book content efficiently and easily and to export bibliographic information to citation management software.
  • E-books must be easy to navigate. Users should be able to preview content before downloading; navigate e-book content through hyperlinked tables of contents, indexes and footnotes; and return to content via persistent URLs.
  • E-books must be ADA compliant in accordance with state and federal law.

Standards for Product Packages

  • Packages must protect the confidentiality of user information. The Library fully endorses the California Reader Privacy Act (SB 602).
  • Packages must include full-level bibliographic records meeting national cataloging standards and COUNTER-compliant usage statistics.
  • Packages must contain the ability to coordinate discovery with third-party services such as Serials Solutions and SFX, with regard for KBART Best Practices.
  • Packages must allow for access via IP authentication.
  • Packages must provide the ability to brand resources as "Provided by the UCLA Library."
  • Packages must provide the ability to archive content.

Sustainable and Fair Business Models

  • Perpetual access to purchased content must be provided, regardless of the life of the platform.
  • Providers should offer flexible pricing models that allow for the purchase of discrete subject-based collections and/or individual titles, as opposed to a unitary bundle of products.
  • There should be no or extremely minimal maintenance and/or access fees for previously purchased products.
  • When prior substantial investments in alternative formats have been made by the Library, monetary credit should apply toward the purchase of electronic versions.

As national standards and best practices concerning the e-book market evolve, the Library expects provider partners to embrace and comply with these standards. Contracts should be modified in the spirit of compliance to enable business alliances to continue to support UCLA's fundamental mission of teaching, research and public service.