[Eril-l] privacy concerns and adobe digital editions and openathens vs ezproxy

[Melissa Belvadi]

Hi,

We're currently an ezproxy (self-hosted) using library, and have ebooks on
platforms such as EBSCO and Proquest that use Adobe Digital Editions to let
users download books for offline reading.
My understanding is that EBSCO and Proquest both require the user to create
an account on that vendor's platform in order to "checkout" books that use
ADE.  That creates a privacy issue for the vendors knowing the user reading
what books, information that is normally not available to them for online
reading.

We are talking about possibly getting OpenAthens. My understanding of that
system is that the library can configure vendors to create such "personal
accounts" with some kind of serial number so that the vendor never really
does know who the user is, not even their email address. It seems to me
that that would be a solution to the privacy problem with ADE use.

But does it actually work that way?

Would OpenAthens, configured to only give that serial# type info to the
vendors, be a genuine solution to this privacy problem with ADE and ebook
checkouts on EBSCO and Proquest?

Or do those two vendors in particular not really handle that serial#
"registration" properly for ADE / ebook checkout use?



Melissa Belvadi
Collections Librarian
University of Prince Edward Island
mbelvadi at upei.ca  902-566-0581
my public calendar
<http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=mbelvadi%40upei.ca&ctz=America/Halifax&mode=week>
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