From: "Pikas, Christina K." <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2016 13:07:39 +0000

It's hardly fair to call librarians stupid for licensing things that
can be gotten for free. If we did not, there would be no market for
aggregators of government documents for one thing! Also, we would not
be supporting ArXiv or SCOAP3.

Several of my favorite STEM ebook publishers offer pdf ebooks with no
DRM. One large one allows you to download the entire book as one file
(that switch is tough on those of us looking at usage). Not everyone
will download the entire book in pdf as it's a bit unwieldy and often
you need just a few chapters.

In any case, as I said ages ago at a publishing conference
(http://www.slideshare.net/cpikas/pikas-psp-presentation-february-2010
), there are good reasons to license from the publisher and not from a
third party. It is simply not true that any access is better than no
access. Some platforms are so horrible to use researchers will either
do without or wait to borrow print.

I do agree that getting ebook ILL stats may be like finding a unicorn
- can anyone ILL an ebook?

Christina Pikas
Speaking only for myself and not representing any opinions, etc., of
my immediate organization or larger institution. Also not affiliated
and not advertising for the large ebook publisher that allows you to
download whole pdfs at a time.

-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2016 20:41:08 -0500

What do you imagine the prices of books will be under the regime
summarized here? Will book prices rise 400% to accommodate the
requirements? 1000%? More?

I think you may find it challenging to collect ILL data for ebooks
(print is another matter) if you insist on no DRM, as publishers may
elect not to sell books to libraries any more. The reason for this is
that ILL rights added to no DRM means that the total sale of a title
would be one copy. On the other hand, librarians may be stupid (which
I, for one, absolutely do not believe) and would continue to pay for
things that they can get for free.

The alternative to ILL is DDA, which can be made to work, provided
that the books are priced high enough.

Joe Esposito