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

[Swindler, Luke]

We all need to be clear about the core business considerations and underlying economics of ebooks that govern DRM restrictions—and not waste time and effort trying to get publishers and aggregators to make changes that would structurally undermine their ability to vend digital books.


I would summarize these “givens” as follows:

  *   • Ebooks on publisher platforms invariably have few(er) DRM restrictions and typically default to unlimited simultaneous uses, beginning with the fact that each publisher has to satisfy only its own needs;
  *   • Publishers typically will exclude and/or impose DRM restrictions on titles that have large numbers of individual sales and fall into the following three categories:  textbooks, course-adoption texts, and “trade” books.
  *   • If the publisher platform does include these categories of ebooks, their cost will be much higher—and might still include DRM restrictions to protect individual sales.
  *   • If the publisher platform cannot accommodate different vending models, they will offer these ebooks via aggregators and mandate that such DRM restrictions apply.
  *   • Ebooks on aggregator platforms need to satisfy many content owners and therefore more DRM restrictions exist.
  *   • Ebooks on aggregator platform invariably includes different levels of DRM beginning with the number of simultaneous users at different price levels:  that is, you get what you pay for.
  *   • In order to track/control the various DRM vending regimes on a title-by-title basis, ebooks on aggregator platforms may need to require an individual account even when readers are within an authorized IP range.


Within this context, librarians are most likely to see results that will improve the user experience if they 1) work with publishers and vendors to simplify access, beginning with copying, pasting, emailing, and downloading, and 2) improve readability, e.g., provide ebooks in EPUB, XHTML, and other XML-based formats rather than only PDF because the former are reflowable files developed for digital publishing that can adapt their presentation to the output device and therefore typically easily download to and accurately display on a wide range of mobile devices with variable screen sizes.


Luke Swindler


*****************************************************************************

Luke Swindler                                Collections Management Officer

Davis Library    CB #3918                          luke_swindler at unc.edu<mailto:luke_swindler at unc.edu>

University of North Carolina                            TEL (919-962-1095)

Chapel Hill, NC  27514   USA                        FAX (919-962-4450)

******************************************************************************


On Jun 17, 2016, at 3:47 PM, Melissa Belvadi <mbelvadi at upei.ca<mailto:mbelvadi at upei.ca>> wrote:

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


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


_______________________________________________
Eril-l mailing list
Eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:Eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
http://lists.eril-l.org/listinfo.cgi/eril-l-eril-l.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.eril-l.org/pipermail/eril-l-eril-l.org/attachments/20160620/678f0905/attachment-0001.html>