Eira – Effective Information Retrieval and Acquisition – the consortium of all of the regions in Sweden, ensures that all healthcare professionals have access to a common, high quality knowledge base, regardless of where in Sweden they work.
About Eira
Eira negotiates license agreements for electronic information resources on behalf of Sweden’s 21 regions, represented by the hospital libraries in each region.
The primary aim of the Eira consortium is to negotiate a high quality and diverse, common knowledge base, on behalf of all regions. The content is agreed in cooperation with the hospital libraries and mainly based on demand, usage statistics and price. Compliance to Eira requirements on license terms and conditions is also a deciding factor. There are yearly negotiations with the publishers, resulting in both one-year and multi-year agreements.
Eira Core, Eira Plus and Eira Add-on
Content negotiated by Eira is divided into Eira Core, Eira Plus and Eira Add-on. Eira Core is the common, high quality knowledge base available in all Regions. An Eira Core agreement means all 21 regions subscribe. Eira Plus is optional additional agreements, subscribed to by selected regions. For both Eira Core and Eira Plus, ordering, license and invoicing is coordinated through Inera. Eira Add-on is additional offers negotiated by Eira. For Eira Add-on ordering, license and invoicing is handled by vendor and respective region directly.
For Eira Core the license costs are prorated among the members (regions), based on the number of residents.
The Eira network
The nationwide network of hospital librarians is an important intermediary between the users - the healthcare employees - and the Eira office at Inera.
The hospital libraries are the ones primarily responsible for disseminating information and providing training in the use of the electronic resources.
The Eira office
Since 2010 Eira consortium has its own office situated at Inera.
The Eira office manages negotiations, keeps regular contact with publishers and members, administrates the payment and charges of the license costs, analyzes usage statistics, arranges contact meetings etc.
Authorized users and access to content
Usage rights and limitations on use
In Eira licences "Authorized users" are defined as follows:
"All health care personnel, employees in the County Councils and Swedish health care personnel working on behalf of and funded by the County Councils. Persons who are permitted to access the Licensee’s information services from computer terminals within the physical premises of the Licensee ("Walk-In Users") are also deemed to be Authorized Users, for the time they are within the physical premises of the Licensee."
Eira licences in general allow:
Authorized users to use content in accordance with copyright and other applicable laws for personal non-commercial purposes
Authorized users to access, browse, view and search content as well as print, download and store a reasonable number of items and provide copies of individual items to other Authorized users and to third party colleagues for scholarly and research use
Eira libraries may on occasion supply single copies of articles to a non-commercial library located in Sweden by post, facsimile or email (provided the electronic file is deleted immediately after printing), to fulfil requests for Interlibrary Loan ("ILL"), provided such use is in accordance with applicable copyright law. Libraries are not allowed to forward emails with digital content to the end user, articles must be distributed to the end user as a print copy