JCS Online Resources turns 13!

Joyce Martin, JCS Online Resources founder, shares the journey that began in 2010.?

For 13 years, JCS Online Resources has been enabling secondary schools and colleges to offer their students high-quality digital content for their studies that is completely trustworthy and with sources they can cite with confidence.??

Having started out with just 2 part-time colleagues in a tiny office offering subscriptions to just UK secondary schools, I’m incredibly proud that 13 years later over 2000 schools from across the globe subscribe to one or more resources, and I have a terrific team of 12!?

And now we not only work with schools and colleges, but also have resources for public libraries in the UK and ANZ – with a great many subscribers!?

Where it all started?

I can’t take credit for thinking up this important service, as it began as a UK government funded initiative in 2008 which I was heading up, but when the funding ended, I couldn’t let it just die. The initiative was important, and I believed passionately about its objectives. The take-up of subscriptions had been good and it was clear there was a need for such resources.?

There was no doubt in my mind that all schools and colleges should be providing their students with an online reference library – just like universities. We were moving into a very technology driven world with an incredibly fast-growing internet which was so quickly becoming a space for anyone to write about anything, regardless of their credentials.?

However, having had a whole career in the public sector focused on eLearning within education I knew only too well that school library budgets – or budgets for any resources in schools – were not generous so getting the pricing right was also essential.?

From the start, I have negotiated with the publishers we represent to provide the best subscriptions rates to make it as fair and affordable as possible for schools and colleges to develop an online reference library. This has always been a core value of JCS and is still intrinsic to what we do and who we are today.?

What’s next??

JCS is set to continue for a great many years to come; negotiating with more publishers for digital resources to support students’ learning and research needs, and supporting schools, colleges, and public libraries to offer the best online library possible!?