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

[Heather Shipman]

I'm skeptical of whether "universal" would really cover all the places our patrons go; these things almost always miss vulnerable populations. The Great Firewall is a thing; students whose family homes are too rural for internet companies to be interested in serving, or whose budgets are too tight to justify home internet, are a thing; students doing field research in super remote areas are a thing.


But even beyond that, internet access goes on the fritz. Mobile devices lose battery power faster when they're constantly reaching out to the internet, than when they have the internet turned off.


We have people with vision issues who find it much easier to read on an e-ink device than on a computer screen.


Some folks want to turn off their internet entirely while they're trying to focus - there are even apps out there that people install to shut off their internet distractions when they want to force themselves to focus on their work. Those patrons are going to want to download the content they want to study before they shut off their connection.


There are a lot of reasons people might prefer to download, even if they have sufficient internet access. I think it's worth our energy to keep pushing for simplifying downloads.


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 <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org> on behalf of Melissa Belvadi <mbelvadi at upei.ca>
Sent: Friday, June 17, 2016 3:47:25 PM
To: Harper, Cynthia
Cc: 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 question whether it is worth our energy to fight about the downloading issue. Increasingly, patrons have wireless/G-whatever live access to the Internet just about everywhere they go - even on some airplanes now. As wireless access becomes universal, the need for offline downloading as compared with just reading the ebook in the native interface (eg Proquest, Ebscohost, etc.) becomes less important.  While we aren't there yet, the legal barriers for the aggregators are such that by the time they can solve all the ADE-type issues being discussed here, it won't matter anyway.

FYI, I track the data for our print book circulation as well as our ebooks, and our non-downloadable ebooks are still getting far more uses than our far larger print collection is (although I'll admit we don't track in-house use of print books).  So different libraries are having different experiences when it comes to patron acceptance of non-downloadable ebooks.

Melissa Belvadi, UPEI



On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 3:05 PM, Harper, Cynthia <charper at vts.edu<mailto:charper at vts.edu>> wrote:
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<tel:703-461-1794>


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--
Melissa Belvadi
Collections Librarian
University of Prince Edward Island
mbelvadi at upei.ca<mailto:mbelvadi at upei.ca> 902-566-0581


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