The Library's digital collection has amassed over three and a half million downloads
Subject: Multidisciplinary02/06/20Discover the top 10 trend-setting platforms among UOC students, professors and researchers.
Unlike the libraries at brick-and-mortar universities, the UOC Library has always been completely online. Over the years, it has expanded its collection of online platforms, e-books and e-journals to meet the needs of its university community, making content available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Each semester, the Library team hand-picks and updates content at the faculty's request and to cater to students' needs. In total, the Library contains 177 platforms, 82,000 e-journals and 100,000 e-books specialized in the faculties' different areas of knowledge.
Each passing year is seeing more people turn to the Library's content for their studies. As library collection coordinator Mireia Pérez Cervera put it, "the number of downloads in 2019 rose by 26% in comparison to the year before".
The top 10 most widely used platforms
ProQuest Ebook Central contains books from a plethora of disciplines, which may be why it continues to lead the ranking in number of downloads.
Hot on its heels is Safari Tech Books Online, which offers books, articles and case studies from the fields of computer science, technology and multimedia, as well as audiovisual courses covering a wide variety of topics.
Next on the ranking are five platforms focused on law, which account for a large portion of the overall downloads: Mementos de Francis Lefebvre, El Derecho, vLex, Aranzadi and La Ley. They contain exhaustive, up-to-date manuals with in-depth analyses of current regulations and legislation, and national and international case law.
Rounding off the list, we have e-books and e-journals from three publishing groups: Springer, Elsevier and Wiley. The three platforms stand out for their leading academic content, which covers an extensive array of topics, from the social sciences and humanities to computer and health sciences.
This infographic will help you get to know the Library collection better.
Mireia Pérez Cervera is the UOC Library collection coordinator. She holds an official diplomatura degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Barcelona and a master's degree in Libraries and Digital Information Services from Carlos III University. She has carried out several professional stays abroad; namely, at the Bibliothèque publique d’information du Centre Pompidou in Paris, at the archive at Rome's Istituto Luigi Sturzo and at the European University Institute in Florence.