Create&Convert is designed to help learning providers comply with the Equality Act 2010. The new Act puts the onus on learning providers to take reasonable steps to ensure that their information is accessible.

Create&Convert is a tool that can take documents in common electronic formats (like MS Office, Open Office etc) and turn them into ‘epubs’ or talking books.

It is a tool that learning providers can use to support learners who are print-impaired or experience difficulties with reading and who prefer to access content in a flexible and multi-sensory format.

Create&Convert also allows indexing and synchronising of text so that the learner can always be aware of where they are within a document.

Create&Convert has three easy stages:

• create an accessible document
• export it to talking book format
• check the output by reading or listening to the result

The individual tools within Create&Convert are all outputs of the DAISY consortium, but the download mechanisms, the interface, the support mechanisms and tutorials have been designed by JISC RSC Scotland North & East.

Like the rest of the  EduApps software  family, Create&Convert is free!
For more information and to download Create&Convert go to:
http://www.rsc-ne-scotland.ac.uk/eduapps/createconvert.php

In addition to the centrally-purchased E-Books for FE Collection colleges can now supplement their collection by purchasing additional titles. There are 100 titles specially selected by JISC Collections and FE colleges to form the e-Select Top 100 Collection. Titles were selected for their relevance to qualifications taken in FE, and provide demonstrable discounts for FE colleges.

All titles included in the e-Select Top 100 Collection offer unlimited, simultaneous user access (any number of users can access the same title at the same time). They are purchased in perpetuity and access to these titles, through the e-books for FE license, will be available to 31st August 2014. After this date, purchased e-books will remain available, though a small access fee may apply.

More information:

e-books for FE website

http://site.ebrary.com/lib/eselecttitles

JISC Collections would like to invite you to participate in a survey of everyone involved in the provision of learning materials and their use in Further Education colleges in the UK.

JISC Collections has commissioned a team of consultants to undertake work on how e-books might best be provided to the FE sector and this survey will greatly influence our recommendations.  We are asking all FE institutions in the UK and would like to understand more about your current situation in textbook provision and the potential for providing textbooks online, including how these may be paid for and incorporated into existing systems.

We would like to encourage you to fill it out and to recommend that your librarian, VLE manager, instructors and students participate.

We have added an incentive of a prize draw for all participants completing the survey.  The prize is Amazon vouchers worth £25 for each category of participant:

• Librarian/library staff
• VLE Manager
• Course Leader
• Instructor
• Student

To fill out the survey please go to:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=rh_2bXQdEVvbz5Uti1PZLLZQ_3d_3d

We would like to thank you in advance for your assistance.

26 e-course texts across four subject areas (Medicine, Business, Engineering and Media Studies) were made available to 127 UK universities who took part in a National e-books observatory project funded by JISC and carried out by JISC Collections.

The largest study of its kind, it has seen the behaviours of over 50,000 participants and observed to see how they use a selection of academic electronic textbooks.

Caren Milloy, the project’s manager at JISC Collections, and her co-author of the National e-books Observatory Project report, Ian Rowlands from CIBER who carried out the study, speak with Rebecca O’Brien about this project in this JISC podcast.

The national e-books observatory project is about exploring impacts, observing behaviours and developing new models to stimulate the e-books market, and to do all this in a managed environment.

National e-books observatory project Podcast

Transcript

Over the next five years, the national e-books project, with funding from JISC and the LSC, will enable all further education students in the UK to access online course texts to support their studies. Starting in time for the new academic year, nearly 3,000 titles will be available via the e-books ebrary platform with subjects ranging from Fashion Design to Software Engineering, Health and Social Care to Automobile Electronics, and Beauty Therapy to Practical Lambing. Access will be available whether students are studying in the college, at home or in an internet café. The e-books included in this collection were selected by members of the FE community as part of extensive community consultations to provide taught course e-books for FE students and teachers.

More information about this project and how to subscribe from:
http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/catalogue/ebooksforfe

Following the recent tender process for e-books, JISC Collections is inviting the FE community to take part in an online consultation to help determine which e-books will be selected.