Supporting Students & Faculty in an Unpredictable Learning Environment

This academic year has brought unique challenges to colleges and universities around the world. As campuses had to close their doors to students and faculty amid a global pandemic, libraries had to quickly figure out how to best support teaching and learning in an online-only environment.

At California State University (CSU), Long Beach, the top priority was making required resources, including books and historical periodicals, immediately accessible to students, according to Collection Development Officer Tracy Gilmore.

“What we needed was an affordable way to provide the appropriate access for each of the [course reserves] titles that we purchased” with single user, multiple users and unlimited access license options, she explained.

“ProQuest’s title-matching was the perfect way for us to do this,” she said.

Gilmore described the title-matching process as “pretty straight forward.” The CSU Long Beach library granted ProQuest permission to access their holdings in Alma.

“What they were able to do is provide us with a report on circulation data,” Gilmore said. “This circulation data allowed us to identify high circulating titles.”

With this report, “we were able to identify ebook titles that were eligible for ProQuest Ebook Central P to E 50% discount,” which was hugely beneficial from a budget perspective. But that wasn’t all,” Gilmore added.

“Plus, we avoided purchasing duplicate content because the report identified titles that we already owned or had access to through Academic Complete or other [Ebook Central] subscription services, she noted.”

Gilmore noted that this process “worked so well for us that we actually sent additional lists of our highly-requested ILL titles” so these books would continue to be available electronically for students and faculty – even when print copies were inaccessible.

Because the current term is being conducted remotely – and future terms are still uncertain – Gilmore said her library also worked with their partners at ProQuest on a list of faculty-requested titles for the rest of this academic year going into 2020-2021. This will ensure materials are available for research and learning whether on campus or online only.

“These title matches proved very useful for us. We were able to quickly pivot to providing e-titles to those students and faculty who needed them in the middle of spring semester.”

And, as an added benefit, Gilmore said the title-matching program is also “helping us now to cultivate a larger e-book collection.”

Learn more about ProQuest E Now programs

Title matching for books and periodicals is part of a series of programs to support flexible teaching and learning on campus and online. Developed based on market feedback, input from library and higher ed organizations and discussions with customers around the world, ProQuest’s E Now programs include:

• • Ebook Central P to E Program, enables libraries to add e-versions of their print titles. Over 604K titles are available for a 50% discount on the Ebook Central list price when you own the print.
  • E-First, Print Later is designed for the many libraries that can’t receive shipments of the print books they’ve invested in. ProQuest uses its OASIS and Rialto capabilities to research all available options and discounts for e-versions that can be used in the interim and by remote users.
  • Historical Periodicals Program is designed to ensure users continue to have access to the library’s historical periodicals. ProQuest maps physical resources to digital versions and discounts the replacements up to 50%.
  • Music Scores Program supports music researchers and students who rely heavily on print editions—with over 50,000 online sheet music titles at up to a 50% discount.

Watch our recent webinar, Transition to Digital Collections to Support Online Studies, to learn about E Now title matching. You can also check out the latest developments in E Now programs or get started here.