Growth of the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library (SHEDL)

The LRC is pleased to report that, following successful negotiations by representatives of SHEDL, three new publishers have joined the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library this year. They are Oxford University Press, Edinburgh University Press and Berg Publishing, and between them they provide full text access back to 1996 - where available - for 288 titles.

Six publishers now provide material under SHEDL agreements with content from the American Chemical Society, Springer and Cambridge University Press being available since 2009. In total there are now 1,876 titles available through SHEDL.

The SHEDL consortium consists of all 19 HEIs in Scotland and has a business model that all institutions should get the same access and at costs not exceeding their existing spend with the publishers selected. If an institution doesn't have any subscriptions with a selected publisher then their access to content is free of charge; for example, QMU does not pay for access to the material from the American Chemical Society.

First year usage statistics show an increase of 41.3% for 2009 compared to 2008 across the consortium. For QMU our usage in 2009:

• Springer - increased by 82.5%


• Cambridge University Press - increased by 33%


• American Chemical Society - increased by 1005 (as previously we did not have access)

The titles are all listed on our A to Z of electronic journals page.