The digital archival collections group purchasing pilot by Jisc is now a fully-fledged scheme thanks to the success of two pilots that saved participating universities a total of £458,000.

Under the scheme, Jisc Collections works in collaboration with nine publishers to make digital archive collections more affordable for HE organisations.

Libraries can choose from 110 primary source digital archival collections across the nine publishers: Brill, British Online Archives, De Gruyter, EBSCO, Irish Newspaper Archives, ProQuest, Public Information Online, Taylor & Francis and Wiley.

Jisc’s approach to the scheme is community-centred and based on the principle that the more products purchased, the lower the price for those participating. Members of the scheme collectively help each other drive down the cost by leveraging the power of group purchasing.

Karen Colbron, digital content manager at Jisc, said:

“The success of group purchasing lies with the collective buying power of our members driving the discounts they all benefit from based on the total number of purchases per publisher.

“Following the successful pilot phase, we’re pleased to offer this acquisition model as an on-going annual service to our members, significantly increasing the number of publishers, products and subject areas covered.”

Neil Davies, content acquisition manager at Durham University Library said:

“The transparency of information received, along with the discounts achieved, enabled us to make decisions about digital archival collections with certainty about the price, ensuring we got the best value.”

Eleanor Craig, content delivery and access librarian at the University of Sussex and group purchasing pilot participant, said:

“Knowing that Jisc Collections would be working to get the best deal possible for the academic community meant we could just sit back and select the ones we were most interested in.”

The group purchasing scheme will run for four years and is open to all HE institutions as defined in the Jisc banding model.