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Libraries are expected to act as repositories of a nation’s heritage and to provide and administer large collections including easily damaged works that cannot be replaced. It does not seem unreasonable to allow a library to recover the costs of conservation from the users of the documents as well as from the nation state. Historically it has been considered reasonable for authors to recover income from lending, although now that electronic document copying is trivial, the nature, function and role of lending libraries seem increasingly under question by some.
Libraries also have to be able to account for the number of individual copyright books read a year and to make sure that lending items are recovered or replaced. There is no ‘free-for-all’ or giveaway to all comers. It is not the Internet model of use anywhere copy everywhere.
Libraries have a strong tradition for being impartial and making knowledge available without fear or favour. They still have larger collections of published work than the Internet currently has available. That information could be made generally available if the economic case can be made. Libraries using ebook DRM technologies such as those provided by Locklizard to administer their rights may be able to increase their readership and their income as well as recovering necessary costs for storage and conservation. Locklizard facilitates controlled digital lending by ensuring ebooks cannot be given away outside the authorization of the library.
Converting Physical Books to EbooksLibraries have previously controlled documents by not allowing them to leave their premises except under controlled conditions. But that creates serious limitations on facilitating academic study and review. This poses the question of how, in the digital age, books and documents can be distributed and controlled (controlled digital lending) without harming the economic mechanisms needed to pay for their support infrastructure.
Using Locklizard ebook DRM it is possible to convert to a model where physical copies are hardly ever touched or distributed except for academic study or for public exhibitions, and all lending is done using DRM controlled digital versions.
Some have considered that libraries should be able to operate in two modes.
DID YOU KNOW?“The ROI on our Safeguard ebook DRM program has taken us into areas of the world and among people groups we could have never reached before with printed versions of our resources.
Our authors rest easy knowing their books are not being illegally distributed, and this alone is attracting new authors to our publication division.
Finally, the reduction in labor to authorize a new customer on the Locklizard servers and send them an ebook is seconds compared to the time required to pick, pack, ship, and track a package of printed books.”
 | Controlled digital lending & controlling ebook use |
Converting to electronic books can save on administration time and costs. By adding ebook DRM you can then securely control digital lending – usage, enforce lending due dates automatically, and restrict the locations where ebooks can be used.
Locklizard ebook DRM can help with:
So there are many positive benefits that can be realised by libraries using Locklizard ebook DRM solutions for controlled digital lending – enabling you to easily control access to and use of your classical and modern collections. Perhaps the most important are the ability to maintain a positive relationship with the Copyright Collecting Societies whilst embracing digitized publication, and the ability to create new income streams to help defray the costs of conservation and the work of curators in maintaining the great classical collections that are the bedrock of our literary and artistic history. Also, being able to vastly reduce the amount of physical storage needed for modern publications that do not require printed copies for distribution or for archive would be a positive contribution to cost reduction.
Right-click on a PDF file to select Safeguard Secure PDF Writer. Then choose your DRM controls:
A key function provided by libraries is to make their collections available to users (borrowers). And this may be currently published work (books, pictures and illustrations), and just as, or perhaps more importantly, making accessible ancient manuscripts.
Ancient manuscripts may be the ‘jewel in the crown’ for a library, but making them available may also be an ‘Achilles heel’ because they tend to be delicate, rare and almost impossible to repair if they are damaged through carelessness or malice. Typically they can only be studied in the library, and possibly only by appointment or under supervision. This can seriously reduce availability for ancient manuscripts, and, say with the restrictions in force during a pandemic, reduce access to almost nothing, owing to a shortage of both librarians and users.
One route forward worth considering is to scan ancient documents and pictures to the PDF format, converting them into digital documents. The PDF format is particularly helpful in that it can cope with the differing document formats (ancient manuscripts have different conventions and few standards) whilst PDF gives a consistency across multiple operating systems and screens/printers. Tablet technology available today allows for simple image re-sizing when a user wishes to examine scanned text and/or images.
But that is not to say that making documents available means necessarily giving them away. There may be terms and conditions that have to be met that were agreed with the original document owner. So it can be very important to be able to prevent copies of documents from being made, especially if they can be faked and inaccurate versions circulated without any control and if there is no attribution as to ownership.
Granting a user a controlled period of access to documents may be important rather than giving free access away forever. Ensuring a level of income from charging for access may be a requirement in order to pay for the storage and curation of ancient manuscripts, and the costs of scanning them. Maintaining controlled access may also require placing watermarks on printed copies to identify the user distributing unauthorized copies whether captured on a camera or taken from a printed copy.
Locklizard is well placed to assist the librarian in sharing ancient manuscripts securely with controlled digital lending. We provide DRM controls that protect ancient manuscripts from piracy, theft and misuse by stopping unauthorized sharing and controlling document use. You can prevent protected PDF documents from being used outside of the library network, or can lock them to specific USB devices and/or machines/users. Start and stop dates for documents are supported, or access can be granted for a number of days (or views) after first use. Actual document use and printing may be logged to support input to charging mechanisms or usage monitoring systems. Printing can be forbidden, and watermarks can be added dynamically to both screen images and print-out. Documents cannot be saved or saved as and the original PDF format cannot be recovered.
