Emily Mew, Commissioning Editor for International Development books at Edward Elgar Publishing

As part of our on-going commitment to increasing access to knowledge, we are delighted to announce the renewal of our successful partnership with not-for-profit organization Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL). EIFL works with libraries to enable access to knowledge in developing and transition economy countries in Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America. Through this partnership agreement, Edward Elgar Publishing has committed to providing free access to our journals and development studies eBooks to 32 countries, via our award-winning content platform Elgaronline.

Romy Beard, Licencing Programme Manager at EIFL says:

“Edward Elgar is one of two publishers that make eBooks available to libraries in the countries where we work. In total, libraries from 32 EIFL countries are eligible for free access to the 288 development studies e-books from Edward Elgar. Around 280 libraries have signed up for this offer, which represents 15% of all of our free access subscriptions from 13 different publishers. The uptake of the offer has been a great success, and responses from our members have been very positive.”

This uptake so far is really pleasing and demonstrates the success of the partnership. EIFL have also identified a need for additional training for libraries to ensure that usage from subscribing institutions is further increased, and are currently implementing a programme of training.

We are really proud of this agreement with EIFL, which is also combined with our own continuing commitment to offering individual purchasers lower cost e-books through Google Books and other consumer e-book vendors, made available simultaneously alongside the print edition. This means that for the vast majority of our books a paperback priced e-book is now available from the outset of publication.

The agreement is open to EIFL partner-consortia and their member libraries in countries including 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, Nigeria, Palestine, Senegal, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Zambia and Zimbabwe.