Numérique Premium | eDesiderata

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Overview

Numérique Premium is a new digital books platform including works from 50 French-speaking publishers and societies. The ebooks are offered for annual subscription or one-off purchase in thematic collections.This e-books database is intended to provide access to secondary works and some compilations of source materials in both “humanities and social sciences.”

Provider:

Numérique Premium

Posted:

Dec 2, 2013 12:39pm

Updated:

Oct 30, 2020 12:14pm

Source

CRL reviews are based on independent research. Information is researched by CRL staff and other specialists at CRL libraries. See CRL Review for additional source notes.

Details

Collection Content

Subject Areas:

Arts and Humanities

Social Sciences

Resource Types:

Electronic books

Major Languages:

French

- Denotes data sourced directly from publisher

Content Details:


Topics covered	All historical periods from ancient times till today with multi-aspects : military, politics, economics, cultural, social, scientific, religious, historiography. Also Literature, Arts, Geopolitics, Education, Psychology, Theology, Law, Philosophy, etc.
Geographic coverage	Europe mainly, Middle East, Africa, Americas, Asia
Chronological coverage	Ancient, Medieval, Modern, Contemporary, Recent
Source format(s)	E-Book
Total titles	2,400 as of June 2018/3,000 by the end of 2018
Total pages	N/A
Digital collection launch date	Sep-13
Completion date	N/A
Collection ongoing	Y
Update frequency	At least bi-annually

Specifications

Metadata:


MARC records available	Y (UNIMARC & MARC21)
Creator of MARC records	the publisher
Source for obtaining MARC records	the publisher (MARC21 records may be requested through the UNIMARC platform)
Fee for MARC records	Y (Free UNIMARC; MARC21 records at $3 per title)
Subject authorities used	N/A
Name authorities used	N/A

Technical Platform:


Browser compatibility	Internet Explorer 10+, Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera
Authentication options	IP (Proxy included), Shibboleth, UN/PW
Archiving solution (master files)	Y (www.clockss .org for purchased content)
Archiving solution (derivative files)	N/A
Available in web discovery tools	Y (KBART file, XML files)
Open url target	Y (KBART file)
Federated searching, z39.50	Y (KBART file)
Local host option	N
Usage stats based on Counter code	Y (Counter 4)

Interface Tools:


Full text displayed	Y
Page images	Y
Color images	Y
Search full text	Y (on eReader tool)
Advanced search	Y
Search within results	N (filters)
Limit results by dates and/or document types	Y (filters)
Display highlighted search terms	Y
Display snippet (search term in context)	N
Relevance sorting	Y
Save searches	Y
Download PDF	Y (PDF in streaming, PDF download awaited before end of 2018)
Download HTML	N
Print page	Y (1 page or page range)
Print full document	Y (waiting for eReader print limitation for publishers' policy)
Export citations	Y
Annotation tools	N (to be explored with personal user accounts in 2018-2019)
Cross-product searching	N
ILL permitted	NA
Text/data mining permitted	Y

Terms and Provider Details

Terms:


Subscription option	Y
Purchase option	Y
Multiple year payments option	N
Maintenance fees	Y (Annual Technical Access and Update Fees for Purchase)
Hosting charges	N

Provider:

Numérique Premium

Website:

http://www.numeriquepremium.com/

Main Address:

44 quai Henri-IV

75004 Paris

France

CRL Review

Collection Content:

Numérique Premium is a new digital books platform including works from forty French-speaking publishers and societies. The ebooks are offered for annual subscription or one-off purchase in thematic collections.This e-books database is intended to provide access to secondary works and some compilations of source materials from a variety of publishers in both “humanities and social sciences.” However, in its early stages it is oriented much more toward the humanities than to quantitative social science content.

There are 25 collections or groups of e-books, with an initial goal of providing at least 80 titles per collection. At the time of this review, there was just a total of over 600 titles available. Some collections were relatively small, while others contained 150 or more. The scope of the collections varies considerably, from the broad “Histoire ancienne” and “Histoire contemporaine” to a collection on “de Gaulle” (French leader Charles de Gaulle), and a valuable collection of primary material and essays on author Émile Zola. There are also 28 subject headings with further specific sub-categories, covering the arts, geography, history, and literature.

The material tends toward cultural criticism, with the exception of the “Géopolitique” section, which contains typical political science studies.

2020 Update:

As of October 2020, the total title count is 4,000.

Delivery:

Metadata

While there are MARC records available for the titles, they are in UNIMARC format instead of MARC21. American libraries preferring MARC21 format may have to pay an additional fee for crosswalked records, which is unfortunate.

Platform

The interface at the time of this review was in beta stage, developed “in partnership with [the firm] Publishing Technology.” The titles are accessible by browsing the collections, subject facets, or full title list. There is also a search and advanced search function. While the interface suggests that the user can select to search full text within a specific title, the results are not conclusive. This is probably because there are no pointers from search results to specific snippets, words in context, or even page references to where the search terms might appear within the body of a title. In fact, the “search . . . within the fulltext” command displays only the appearance of terms within extended abstract summaries of the book’s contents. This is a major deficiency. The in text search feature exists in the eReader environment though.

For each title the user can view a linked table of contents (not yet available for all titles), a preview of the first 20 pages (not yet available for all titles), or a view of full text. Navigation within the books did not at the time offer the flexibility of a typical commercial e-book platform. One had to click “next” or “previous” to advance pages; scrolling was not possible. There was no thumbnail overview of pages. Downloading or printing of chapters or individual text pages did not seem readily available from the interface; printing was only available for the descriptive entry. This too is a major deficiency. One can now use the 2-page or 1-page reader using the PDF scrolling style. There are now thumbnails beneath the reader screen. Printing Chapter or pages is now straightforward. Copy and paste (with ctrl C/ ctrl V on a PC) is now also available.

Strengths and Weaknesses:

This database offers the potential for access to e-books in the French language which might be difficult to obtain otherwise. However, it is difficult to determine who would find this collection particularly useful at this stage. On the one hand, as scholarly studies the content may be too specialized for many undergraduates. On the other hand, the current extent of the collections is too limited to make it attractive to more advanced researchers, unless a specifically required title happened to appear exclusively here. As the number of titles expands the database could become more useful to scholars. There had been concerns about earlier versions of the interface; recent updates to the interface are in the process of being evaluated.

Sources

Sources for this review include information publicly posted or obtained directly from the publisher; data collected by CRL staff and specialists at CRL libraries; and examination of the digital collection when possible. Other sources are noted where cited. CRL continues to gather additional information on this resource and to solicit critical assessment.

CRL Offers & Status

Status	Current	Description
CRL Flagged	no	Potential interest to CRL community
Offer Pending	no	Currently a candidate for CRL offer
Active Offer	yes	Currently offered for purchase or new subscription
Trial Access	no	Available for trial
Renewal Offer	no	Currently offered for renewal
Expired Offer	no	Past offers
Inactive / Declined	no	No longer under consideration by CRL
Reviewed by CRL	yes	Evaluation available by CRL and community
Special Access	no	Member-only access available for a limited time

The complete offer and activity details for this resource are only available to CRL members.

Appendix

Title List:

NumeriquePremium_Collections_Updated_Oct2018.xlsx

Numerique Premium presentation given at CIFNAL meeting at ALA June 2015

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