Proposal

The FAU Libraries are requesting $7,100 for the 2013 and 2014 e-book collections from the American Psychological Association (APA). These collections will consist of access to a total of 69 e-books. Each collection will contain all of the new e-books that the APA published in 2013 and 2014.

APA is a scientific and professional organization representing psychology. It is recognized as the official psychology organization in the United States, with nearly 130,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students associated as members. APA’s activities include: establishing standards of professional ethics in the field; organizing meetings and facilitating networking among members; promoting research and development of psychological methods; and publishing authoritative books, videos, reports, and journals.

The FAU Libraries currently subscribe to PsycARTICLES, a database that provides full-text access to APA’s collection of 105 psychology journals. The Libraries also subscribe to PsycINFO, which indexes international literature in psychology and related disciplines. PsycBOOKS is the database where these APA e-books would be hosted.

It is best, however, not to necessarily think of these as three separate databases. The platform where all three of these databases are hosted is called PsycNET. Going to PsycNET allows the user to easily cross-search the APA databases that the user’s institution grants access to. The benefit of this is that the results list from one search in PsycNET can include citations to international literature, full-text APA journal articles, and full-text e-books and chapters from those e-books. If an APA e-book has 15 chapters, 15 full-text chapter records would be indexed in this APA platform, to promote discovery of the title. Multiple users will be able to concurrently access and download this e-book content, 24/7. The availability of multi-user concurrent access would give faculty members the ability to create assigned readings.

Chapters from these e-books can be downloaded as PDF files. APA states that “the bibliographic records [have been] carefully developed by APA experts to yield precise results…APA books are fully vetted through peer review at proposal and manuscript stages…Included books are anchored in theory, informed by empirical research, and draw out practical applications.” (http://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/psycbooks/)

The e-books in these collections would be accessible to all students, whether on campus, via IP authentication, or off campus via EZproxy remote authentication. These collections can be discovered through the FAU library catalog, the APA databases, and librarian-created research guides.

Target student population to be served by the project

Due to the increasingly interdisciplinary trends in the sciences, some of the e-book titles could be of interest to students in other departments. However, this project would mainly serve undergraduate and graduate students in the Psychology department of the College of Science. The Psychology department currently serves over 1,400 undergraduate students and approximately 68 graduate students.

In addition, this department serves the needs of many non-major students, and supports faculty and student research.  During the 2013-2014 school year, a total of 33,340 State Fundable credit hours were taken in this department.

http://iea.fau.edu/Reports/Headcount.aspx

http://iea.fau.edu/Reports/productivity.aspx

Benefit to Student Learning

With subject collections from a leading publisher such as this one, we can rely on the fact that, in general, this content will be authoritative, broad in scope, and well-written. This content will directly support student learning by providing material for course papers, projects, and study.

Space Administration

No space is needed for the project. The e-book collections are online and would be directly available on the PsycBOOKS/PsycNET platform.  This resource would be accessible 24/7 to current students, faculty, and staff on campus and remotely through EZproxy.

The requested funds of $7,100.00 will cover the entire cost of the two APA e-book collections. This would be a one-time purchase.

If funded, we anticipate that access to APA E-Books will begin upon payment of the invoice.

The future cost implication would involve paying annual access fees to host the material on PsycBOOKS. However, no new fees would be required in this case. The Libraries already pay the fees for APA PsycNET hosting, and these collections would simply be additional content that would become available on this platform. The Libraries can confirm that any additional access fees that may arise in the future would be covered by the FAU library budget.

The e-book collections could be expanded by adding future subject collections when funding is available.  The Libraries will measure the success of the collections through usage data and faculty/student consultation. The Libraries will monitor usage through COUNTER standard reports that track the number of times each month that the PsycBOOKS were accessed.

FAU Libraries Electronic Resources