Whether you are part of a school or university or a public library, you can use DRM to transform your library and increase the number of people who rely on you for their reading material by being able to offer ebooks. The only way to be able to allow people to borrow ebooks from the library is by having the ability to remove the ebook at the end of the checkout period - and that's where DRM comes in.
The Importance of Libraries in Communities and on Campuses
The library has always been the cornerstone of the community and campus. That can still be true even as more people switch to ebooks for both pleasure reading and education. While some local libraries have reopened, and campuses across the country are preparing for a return of students, social distancing and capacity limits make this a good time to consider how to use DRM to transform your library.
Demand for eBook Lending Increases
Libraries have always had to carefully manage resources. Preventing book theft was handled through the use of fines. In the past, preventing someone from copying a book was relatively easy, too. Now, everyone has a scanner and photocopier in their home. Preventing book theft and copyright infringement is more challenging. When ebooks first arrived, libraries often would not even consider offering them. Now that the demand for ebooks is up more than 30%, that demand is spilling over into libraries. Digital offerings certainly don’t challenge libraries on space, but how does a library control lending digital books and protect them from being printed, stolen, or shared beyond the lending rights they have?
DRM for Libraries: Prevent eBook Piracy
Did you know that libraries pay more for books than the typical consumer? They make a huge investment in keeping both reference materials and educational books available as well as the most popular fiction. With print books, libraries could set a borrow time that limited how long they had the book and apply fines as a deterrent for keeping them too long. How do libraries apply restrictions to digital books? EditionGuard works with libraries around the world, including Notre Dame University’s library system, to safeguard their digital library. Learn how you can use DRM to transform your library:
EditionGuard Watermarking
With Social DRM, authors and publishers place a visible watermark on the inside of an e-book so that pirated copies can be attributed to the original downloader. Some forms of digital watermarking can also be invisible, allowing publishers to sweep the internet for pirated e-books in circulation.
EditionLink
By choosing EditionLink as your preferred distribution option, a download link can be emailed to your patrons with a specified expiration date for the link you send so it will not be available to download forever.
EditionGuard Adobe DRM
EditionGuard provides a cost-effective and easy-to-use eBook DRM solution that allows libraries to establish a secure vault where you keep your eBooks. Once you upload an eBook to our service, it is immediately encrypted using the latest in cryptographic algorithms. Your eBook is stored securely on our DRM server, and only you have the key to allowing users to decrypt and access the contents of the eBook, making it possible to check out ebooks to patrons using EditionGuard while maintaining control of the length of the borrow by either
- Using the rights parameter of our Fulfillment API to set an expiration period for the eBook during a download.
- Using the Rights Management section when adding or editing an eBook to set an expiration period or date for all downloads.
EditionGuard is a powerful partner to publishers, libraries, and indie authors. Get a free trial today.
