Advantages of Chest Associate Membership

Associate Membership of Chest is conditional upon:

• your institution having a significant role in teaching and/or research
• your institution being a UK or Republic of Ireland resident body
• your institution supporting Higher Education and/or Further Education
• your institution being not-for-profit
• your institution formally adopting the Chest Code of Conduct for the use of Software and Data
• your institution agreeing to appoint a Chest contact to represent your institution on Chest matters and to distribute information as appropriate within your organisation
• the appointed Chest contact commiting to using internet email in their dealings with Chest (many offers and news flashes are publicised by electronic mail only)

If you meet these requirements your organisation may be eligible for Membership. If you would like to become a Member of Chest and participate in Chest Agreements and Offers please read the information below and return the application form for Associate Institution Member Status.

If you are accepted for Associate Membership Chest will then issue your organisation with a Certificate of Membership. You will then be free to participate in any Agreements and Offers open to you.

Chest, the Combined Higher Education Software Team, was set up in 1988 with the support of the Department of Education and Science, now the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) to negotiate, arrange and administer with suppliers, education offers on quality commercial software and data for the Higher Education Community. An increasing number of Chest Agreements are open to Colleges of Further Education in the UK, Chest Associated Institutions, and universities in Europe.

If your institution is not funded by an Education Funding Council and is not a Research Council, it is not eligible for full Chest membership. However, if your organisation is significantly engaged in teaching and/or research, supports Higher and/or Further Education, is wholly resident in the UK, has e-mail facilities and is not-for-profit, then Chest may accept you as an Associate Member upon completion of an application form for Associate Institution Member Status.

Associate Membership costs nothing and is available to institutions who do not fulfil all the requirements for Chest Membership but who have a good case for benefiting from Chest Agreements and Offers. A list of Associated Institutions is included in all new Agreements. You only pay for Agreements you join or Offers you take up, and these are at prices greatly reduced from commercial rates, thereby saving your organisation money.

In addition to subscription charges as indicated in each Eduserv Chest Agreement there is an additional charge levied if access is via Athens username and password. Further information can be found at http://www.athensams.net/libraries

The main distinction between a Chest Institution in HE and an Associate Institution is that Chest will not normally establish an Agreement with a supplier that excludes any of the Chest Member Sites, whereas an Agreement could still go ahead even where the supplier insists that one or more of the Associated Institutions are not included. There is, therefore, no guarantee that Associate Institutions can participate in all Chest deals. However, we expect that in most cases suppliers will agree to all Associate Institutions being included. An Associate Institution interested in participating in an Agreement already in place will need to contact Chest, who in turn will check that the supplier has no objection to that particular Institution being included.