[Eril-l] Academic library ebook downloading is clumsy and ereader features inadequte - what are we doing about it?

Sat Jun 18 16:20:28 PDT 2016

We've developed our own list after a fair amount of research, license-checking, and asking around--we are strongly committed to the DRM-free model.  I maintain a LibGuide with a pretty extensive list of publishers and a simplified list of basic license terms to help out our selectors and ILL staff.

Feel free to check it out:  http://guides.lib.calpoly.edu/ebookguide/ebookguide_DRM_free

(Caveats:  these are only publishers we've licensed with--many more are out there; in some cases the simplified terms may indicate restrictions beyond those in the license--e.g. we ask that course reserve assignments link to the book or chapter so we can better track the usage; also, some of the high-DRM platforms do allow some ILL but it's more complicated than we care to deal with.)

DRM-free models include both subscription and purchase, depending on the publisher.  Some publishers offer multiple models (e.g. Elsevier, which offers single, collection, textbook, and EBS) while others use a single model (e.g. Springer, which sells collections only).

Many of the publishers offering DRM-free books do license through GOBI, or at least are listed there.  I've found that sometimes the DRM-free versions are listed separately in GOBI--e.g. you may find the EBL/ebrary/EBSCO listings in one entry and a separate listing for the Wiley Online Library version.  I'm not sure why this happens--possibly it's to do with whether the primary ISBN is for the print or online version--but it's something to keep in mind.

--
Nikki DeMoville
Electronic Resources Coordinator
Robert E. Kennedy Library
California Polytechnic State University
San Luis Obispo, California

Direct 805-756-5780
Fax 805-756-7711
ndemovil at calpoly.edu<mailto:ndemovil at calpoly.edu>

________________________________
From: Harper, Cynthia <charper at vts.edu>
Sent: Saturday, June 18, 2016 6:38 AM
To: Nikki DeMoville
Subject: RE: [Eril-l] Academic library ebook downloading is clumsy and ereader features inadequte - what are we doing about it?

This may be a stupid question, but how do you find DRM-free ebooks?  Is anyone collecting a list of such publishers?  Is this apparent on Gobi or other ordering systems?  Does it just apply to purchases, and not to subscriptions?

Cindy Harper

From: Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] On Behalf Of Nikki DeMoville
Sent: Friday, June 17, 2016 6:19 PM
To: eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] Academic library ebook downloading is clumsy and ereader features inadequte - what are we doing about it?

We also buy e-books in DRM-free formats wherever we can, or choose the least-restrictive license when forced to go to an aggregator platform.  Our stats likewise show very little use of the full-book download features (because honestly, it's such a pain and time-limited as well, who would use it if they didn't have to?).  We do see a fair amount of PDF downloads and page printing in the aggregator stats, and tons of page views, so we know the books are getting used, often heavily.  Our DRM-free PDF books also have significant usage numbers.  I'll add that the DRM-free publishers are generally more supportive than aggregators for ILL chapter lending, which helps to mitigate the impact of e-books on the resource sharing side.

As far as print vs e-book usage goes, though, there are no simple comparisons.  Comparing the percentage of licensed e-books vs owned print books might be interesting, but would also reflect the relative age and composition of those collections and would vary enormously by discipline.  Comparing raw usage isn't useful as there isn't really a usage report that corresponds well to print circulation (COUNTER BR1 Title requests is the closest but is meant to be used when the "entire book is provided as a single file" so it isn't provided that often).  What happens is you end up trying to compare page views (the preferred metric of aggregators) and chapter views (used by most of the DRM-free platforms) to title circulation, and that isn't likely to yield meaningful results.

Regarding success stories, we once successfully negotiated DRM removal from a vendor that was using FileOpen DRM because it made the PDFs basically unusable on our computers.  Also, I'm not sure exactly what persuaded them, but Taylor & Francis removed DRM from several of their imprints in March 2015.  Business Expert Press provides their books DRM free even though they are only available on the otherwise-restricted Ebrary and iGroup platforms (so it can be done).  I've heard anecdotally from sales reps from publishers with a mixture of DRM-free and restricted imprints that they are aware that libraries would respond positively if the restricted imprints were merged into their DRM-free platforms, but they are often dealing with multiple business models (e.g. academic books vs textbooks) so it's not quite a matter of flipping a switch.

I agree that supporting the less restrictive platforms with our dollars is the best way to reinforce change.  Publishers have to be able to make a business case for removing DRM before they'll risk it.

--
Nikki DeMoville
Electronic Resources Coordinator
Robert E. Kennedy Library
California Polytechnic State University
San Luis Obispo, California

Direct 805-756-5780
Fax 805-756-7711
ndemovil at calpoly.edu<mailto:ndemovil at calpoly.edu>

On 6/17/2016 12:43 PM, Heather Shipman wrote:

We also prefer to buy e-books from the platforms that offer DRM-free PDF chapter downloads – those platforms are generally also entirely unlimited-user access, which is increasingly important to us as we’re buying e-books to support course use. But you can’t always buy the e-book you need on that kind of platform. So we’ve spoken with our aggregator reps about this, as well.

Ebrary, at least, has implemented DRM-free PDF chapter download functionality, but last I checked (quite some time ago), it was still suboptimal – if the chapter is longer than the publisher’s “page download limit”, the chapter download doesn’t work. If it’s a multivolume work, the platform sometimes considers a whole volume to be a “chapter”, which is of course far beyond the page limit, so that also doesn’t work. We pointed these things out to our reps during a visit, maybe last year or so? Two years ago? They took notes.

But ProQuest Ebook Central was probably in the works by then, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t bother integrating these fixes into Ebrary. We haven’t been migrated to PQEC yet – does anybody who has know whether the chapter downloads work better there?

Our new ProQuest rep actually brought up the DRM issue on his own, when he visited recently. He, at least, thought it was something they should try to get rid of if they could talk publishers into it. No idea how much of that came from personal opinion vs. ProQuest internals, though.

I feel like quite often, when I bring up issues of page limits or DRM, aggregator reps will get all apologetic and explain that they have a zillion publishers to negotiate with, and not all publishers are on board; sometimes they have to update their platforms to enable certain features/restrictions to get certain publishers to participate at all. I think they don’t have to enable all the restrictions on all the books, but it makes it impossible to do something sweepingly awesome like turning off all the DRM everywhere. So, it strikes me that the aggregators know it’s a problem, but fixing it is hard. I would like to believe that they’re working on this, one publisher contract at a time. I hope they are.

Does anybody have any success stories, talking any of the zillions of publishers into loosening restrictions? Do we know anything about what might persuade them?

[Thumbnail2]

Heather Shipman

E-resources Acquisition Specialist

110 Olin Library, Cornell University

Heather.shipman at cornell.edu<mailto:Heather.shipman at cornell.edu> ; 607-254-1499

From: Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] On Behalf Of Amy Lynn Fry
Sent: Friday, June 17, 2016 2:25 PM
To: Harper, Cynthia; Eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:Eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] Academic library ebook downloading is clumsy and ereader features inadequte - what are we doing about it?

I pointed this out to a ProQuest rep who was trying to encourage us to buy ebooks, and didn’t get much of a reaction. I get the sense that ebook aggregators have been battling rather unsuccessfully with publishers so hard and for so long they maybe don’t understand that we can’t see their more streamlined process for downloading as a victory, the way they might. They probably think “it’s so much better than it used to be!” And that’s true. But it’s woefully inadequate if the goal is to get people to use academic ebooks through academic libraries.

I looked at our stats for full ebook downloads from ebrary and they’re super tiny – no surprise there. Most people just don’t bother to do that. I wouldn’t.

I really don’t understand why we keep wanting to buy ebooks when they’re like this. I think the vendors are doing all they can and publishers are blocking as much as they can. And libraries keep buying, even though ebooks don’t get used that much (look at how many of your ebook titles get used in a year – I bet it’s about 10%) and they’re hard to use and users don’t prefer them.

I like the publishers like Oxford, Springer and Wiley where you can download whole chapters as pdfs (and for springer the whole book). It makes more sense to buy from these publishers and buy titles that are used that way (chapter by chapter). Everyone knows how to use pdfs, no extra logins are required, they’re easy to read on your phone. I think people will actually do that. I do not think people will log in three times to three different systems and use an app they use for no other purpose.

Now if only we could get the openurl linking to work right for that…Sometimes it does.

Amy Fry

Associate Professor, E-resources Librarian

Jerome Library

Bowling Green, OH 43403

afry at bgsu.edu<mailto:afry at bgsu.edu>

email is the best way to reach me

From: Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] On Behalf Of Harper, Cynthia
Sent: Friday, June 17, 2016 2:06 PM
To: eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
Subject: [Eril-l] Academic library ebook downloading is clumsy and ereader features inadequte - what are we doing about it?

Hi all – I wonder if the message is getting through to aggregator vendors like EBSCo and Proquest that the download and DRM procedures for downloaded ebooks from their collections are seen as onerous by our patrons.  I just redesigned our ebook libguide http://vts.libguides.com/ebooks, and presented the process to the rest of the library staff.  They were underwhelmed, especially when my Avira Antivirus shut off my access to the license server (again) on the computer on which I was presenting.  And requiring three logins – one for remote access, one for the aggregator site, and one Adobe ID – seems preposterous to those getting a one-shot presentation.

I also notice that once I’ve downloaded to Adobe Digital Editions, the features provided differs from ebook to ebooks, based on whether it was a PDf or an epub.  Some PDFs don’t even support searching.  Why can’t you save the quotes you’ve highlighted in the ebook to a file?  I wonder if because Adobe Digital Editions is free software, does it suffer from a lack of vendor commitment?  Or do publishers prevent you from saving your highlighted quotes for copyright reasons?

Are vendors engaging with their customers in discussing these issues?  Where is the listserv conversation going on?

Cindy Harper

E-services and periodicals librarian

Virginia Theological Seminary

Bishop Payne Library

3737 Seminary Road

Alexandria VA 22304

charper at vts.edu<mailto:charper at vts.edu>

703-461-1794

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