Welcome to the March 2021 issue of our e-books for FE newsletter. Usage of our e-books remained relatively high in February, with an increase of 47% over February 2020.

LRC Regional Meetings (England)

Jisc is currently setting up and facilitating a variety of LRC/Library Regional Meetings for all colleges in England. These meetings vary in frequency, but are expected to run on a termly basis to provide members with a chance to network, share good practice, and discuss key areas of the day to day running of your Learning Resource Centres.

In the meetings that have taken place already, the FE & Skills team have given overviews of Vocational Learning Resources, e-books and statistics, Virtual Library, and licenced resources. The agendas for the meetings will be set by the groups themselves, going forward, with whatever Jisc presence is appropriate for support or information.

If you are keen to join one of these meetings, please contact your Account Manager.

FE LRC Community of Practice

On 9 February the first Zoom meeting took place with library staff who had expressed an interest in becoming members of the Leadership Team within the new FE LRC Community of Practice (see the January newsletter for further information on the CoP). In one activity session, participants were asked to suggest the topics of most importance for FE library services, and vote for the ones which seemed of highest priority. The top four or five themes will form the basis of the group launch and initial meetings later this year.

The group voted overwhelmingly for short webinars/clinics on Teams, and there will be a dedicated Teams group set up by Jisc to support these meetings and for day to day ideas sharing among all FE LRC-associated staff.

By 8 March we will have final confirmation of who will sit on the Leadership Team, with a second Leadership Team Zoom meeting scheduled for 23 March. The aim of that meeting will be to draft the Leadership Team charter, look at the initial CoP Teams set-up, and focus again on the hot priority topics in order to identify which one might form the basis of the group launch in April/May.

e-books for FE purchasing round 2021

ProQuest and Pearson have now begun the process of identifying the new e-book titles that they are able to offer for this year’s purchasing round. We have asked to receive these title lists no later than 19 March, in order to begin the assessment and selection process. The volunteer Focus Group members (from the FE library community) will meet with the FE & Skills team in mid-April in order to help us with the final selection decisions, and this process will take into account all the requested titles that we have received from colleges over the past six months. Many thanks to those colleges who spent time in putting those request lists together.

An overview of the purchasing process can be found on the e-books for FE support site:

https://support.ebooksforfe.jisc.ac.uk/index.php/librarian-support/e-books-for-fe-selection-process/

Top 20 users in February 2021

Well done to all organisations who reached a spot in the top 20

Rank	Organisation	User sessions
1	LTE Group	3467
2	New City College London	3102
3	West Nottinghamshire College	2532
4	Farnborough Sixth Form College	1839
5	York College	1807
6	Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College	1796
7	Middlesbrough College	1731
8	Varndean College	1721
9	Hereford Sixth Form College	1631
10	Godalming College	1598
11	West College Scotland	1541
12	The WKCIC Group	1539
13	HCUC – Harrow College & Uxbridge College	1500
14	Grŵp Llandrillo Menai	1471
15	South Thames College	1451
16	Newham Sixth Form College	1346
17	Richard Huish College	1339
18	Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group	1337
19	East Kent College	1305
20	Coventry College	1301

Mergers: If your organisation has recently merged with another, ProQuest may not have the most current merger information and your merger may not be reflected in the usage data. Please check with ProQuest and request that they update your account to reflect the merger. Their e-book support contact address is: ebooksupport@proquest.com

Top 20 titles in February 2021

Rank	Title	User sessions
1	CACHE Level 3 Technical Extended Diploma in Health and Social Care	7742
2	CACHE Level 3 Child Care and Education : Early Years Educator	5965
3	BTEC Nationals Health and Social Care Student Book 1	4122
4	BTEC Nationals Applied Science Student Book 1	3367
5	CACHE Level 2 Diploma for the Early Years Practitioner	3206
6	BTEC Nationals Business Student Book 1 : For the 2016 specifications	2849
7	AQA A Level Biology (Year 1 and Year 2)	2430
8	Psychology: the Science of Mind and Behaviour (8th Edition)	2252
9	BTEC Level 3 National Health and Social Care: Student Book 1	2133
10	BTEC Nationals Health and Social Care Student Book 2 : For the 2016 specifications	2076
11	BTEC Level 3 National Health and Social Care: Student Book 2	2075
12	AQA A-level Psychology Book 1 : For A-level Year 1 and AS	2025
13	Anatomy and Physiology (5th edition)	1902
14	CACHE Level 2 Extended Diploma in Health and Social Care	1841
15	BTEC Nationals Business Student Book 2 : For the 2016 specifications	1814
16	OCR Sociology for A Level	1566
17	AQA A-level Psychology Book 2	1546
18	OCR Psychology for A Level Book 1	1445
19	AQA A-level Sociology : Book 2	1303
20	AQA A-level Sociology for A-level Year 1 and AS : Book 1	1271

Support queries

Email: content.feandskills@jisc.ac.uk
Website: https://support.ebooksforfe.jisc.ac.uk/