From: Galadriel Chilton <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2014 19:18:25 +0000 Hi Colleagues, We recently discovered that an Ebrary e-book we purchased did not include several sections of the book's text. Upon expanding the table of contents, any chapter/section title followed by [text] meant that the chapter/section was replaced by the following message: "To view this chapter please refer to the print version of the book" (screen capture: http://screencast.com/t/Ic1upsUajgY0). This occurred despite the message on the e-book's main webpage indicating that our "institution has unlimited access to this book" (screen capture: http://screencast.com/t/RRgWts0t7). Furthermore, this scenario is different than instances when images or figures are redacted because in this case entire chapters or sections were missing, including the analysis components of the book which are core to the work. Through correspondence with Ebrary support, we learned that missing content such as this varies by e-book title rather than by publisher. Ebrary support stated that they consider the issue of missing content to be a rare one that is discovered when librarians and users report them and could not provide us with a list of e-books with missing content. While Ebrary responded to all of inquiries very quickly and did assure us that a full refund would occur upon request, it is a concern to us that Ebrary's stance is that because missing content is rare it's not considered a big issue. In an effort to understand why content was missing, we also corresponded with our Ebrary representative. The reason given for the missing text was that it was likely due to e-rights restrictions as is seen with illustrations, tables, and diagrams for which the book's author does not hold the copyright. With further investigation, we learned that the EBL version of the e-book was missing the same chapters and large chunks of text. However, the Google Books and Greenleaf Publishing editions of the e-book were complete. We then contacted Greenleaf Publishing to inquire why the e-book via Ebrary was missing text when the e-book via Greenleaf was complete. We were told that it was an e-rights restriction issue and that the missing text was some of the third-party text content that was part of the e-book. Greenleaf also offered us complementary access to a PDF of the complete e-book. Two days after we reported the issue to Ebrary, the full version of the e-book appeared via our Ebrary channel. All of the missing text is now present. When checking sections that had previously been missing, it is very clear that while some of the missing text was third-party text, it also included the author's analysis of the code -- content that is the heart of the work. If rights restrictions are the reason for the missing content, why is the content missing on only some platforms and why is the content now available once reported? Why was there no indication prior to purchase and prior to opening and delving into the content of the e-book that it was incomplete? Have others encountered missing e-book content after purchase? Your insights and comments are appreciated! All the best, Galadriel