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