Increasing Electronic Book Provision for Law

The Squire Law Library recently added the law titles from the Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) collection to the library catalogue, as well as subscribing to the University Press Scholarship Online covering electronic book material published by Stanford University Press and the University of Chicago Press. The ebooks team located in the University Library supported these new acquisitions which are now available to all Cambridge scholars and students.

These subscriptions will greatly enhance the learning experience for undergraduate and postgraduate students alike, as well as helping our academic staff with their research objectives. Library readers have a choice of options – they can take the traditional approach and still read the printed books located in the Squire's book-stacks. Equally where the OSO, and other ebook acquisitions, is concerned there is the option to read and discover content with speed and efficiency directly from the screen, personal laptop and tablet. Readers can access the electronic material in the Squire, via the Library Search catalogue, or from their Colleges and even when they are away from Cambridge in the vacation periods. The availability of a greater number of collections, and single titles, of ebooks across a broad range of subjects including law means that interdisciplinary research can also be facilitated more easily.

During the busy academic terms when resources are in heavy demand by all the law students, when a book is not on the shelves in print increasingly there is availability online, widening the opportunities to find with ease the relevant reading material needed. Evidence suggests that students enjoy the luxury of searching the content of books electronically whilst retaining the pleasure of reading the text from the printed copy!

The portfolio of e-material accessible by students and teaching staff will continue to expand and further collections will be purchased from other major legal publishers in the future.