The Acquisition of Electronic Books in the Area of Astronomy in the UNAM

The high cost of electronic books (e-Books) in the present in addition to the low budget of the Astronomical Libraries of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), led the three libraries in the area of Astronomy to become part of the Group of Libraries in the area of Sciences in 2011.

This Group was motivated by the need of purchasing e-Books, which due to their high costs, made it impossible to acquire materials of interest for each library Therefore the Working Group in dedicated itself to the preparation of lists of e-Books to be purchased in order to avoid duplication and thus be able to acquire all needed titles while allocating to each library part of the budget from our combined resources. Our major goal was to purchased titles from the large publishing companies such as Springer and Elsevier, as well as title to title books acquired from different publishers such as Cambridge, Oxford University Press, World Scientific, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, etc.

It is through these joint purchases that Astronomy's three campus libraries: University City, Ensenada and Morelia, benefited by the acquisition of published e-Books from 2010 to 2013.

In this present document the way the Group works, the policies to be followed in regard to the selection and acquisition of e-Books, as well as the benefits at  Library and Group level will be presented.