Nigeria has been named among 41 nations to benefit from open access to electronic librabry resources following a partnership between Edward Elgar Publishing and Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL), a not-for-profit organisation that works with libraries worldwide to enable access to digital information for people in developing and transition countries.
As part of the collaboration, Edward Elgar Publishing announced that it has agreed to provide institutions in 41 countries with free access to its journals and development studies ebooks via the Edward Elgar Publishing http://www.elgaronline.com content platform.
The agreement initially runs until 31st December 2016 and is open to EIFL partner-consortia and their member libraries in 41 countries including Nigeria.
Others beneficiaries include Albania, Algeria, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Fiji, Georgia, Ghana, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lesotho, Macedonia, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Palestine, Senegal, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Commenting on the partnership, Tim Williams, Edward Elgar Publishing Managing Director said that, “we are delighted to be working with EIFL. As an international academic publisher, ensuring global dissemination and discovery is part of the service we offer to our authors. We are always looking for innovative ways to reach new readers and so this was a natural collaboration that we hope to extend in the future.”
On his part, Romy Beard, EIFL-Licensing Programme Manager explains that, “currently we have negotiated free access to twelve e-resources from nine different publishers, for some or all our member countries. Apart from one, these e-resources are journal collections or databases. We’re pleased to see Edward Elgar allow us to extend our offering to ebooks. The response so far has been very positive, with access requests coming from Nepal, Azerbaijan, Fiji, Cambodia and Nigeria.”
Edward Elgar Publishing is also supporting an important new EIFL initiative in Myanmar. Funded by the Open Society Foundation’s Higher Education Support Program, the EIFL eLibrary Myanmar project is transforming access to information in Myanmar, initially at Yangon University and Mandalay University. As part of the project Edward Elgar Publishing will provide the institutions with free access to law and development studies ebooks from 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010.
“This is a pivotal moment in the history of Myanmar and we are grateful to Edward Elgar Publishing for making their law ebooks and journals available as part of the EIFL eLibrary Myanmar project. The Elgar Research Handbooks will be a particularly valuable resource alongside academic monographs and journal titles such as the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment. It is also good news that Edward Elgar Publishing’s platform, Elgaronline, is already integrated with the discovery tools that are now available at Yangon University and Mandalay University”, Susanna Lob, Manager of the EIFL eLibrary Myanmar project, said.
Home