Criteria
The current URI Libraries guidelines on acquiring e-books as communicated by Collection Management Officer Burkhardt in December 2011 are as follows:
1. URI Libraries are interested in purchasing e-books. We insist on a one-time purchase model, with no ongoing fees or subscription costs.
Exceptions may be made for Reference titles, e.g. Safari O’Reilly or Credo Reference Academic Core Collection.
2. E-books should reside on the publisher's platform, whether that platform is publisher-run (e.g. ScienceDirect, Taylor & Francis Online, SpringerLink) or managed by another organization (e.g. HighWire, Scitation, Project Muse, JSTOR). At this time, URI Libraries are NOT interested in purchasing e-books on third-party aggregator platforms (e.g. ebrary, MyiLibrary, EBL, EBSCO eBook Collection).
Exceptions may be made for individual titles needed to support distance learning curricula.
3. URI Libraries should be granted perpetual access to all e-books purchased.
4. E-books should be DRM-free. As with the model for e-journals, e-books should allow unlimited downloading, printing, and copying & pasting by authorized users. The ability to download the complete book is preferred (instead of only being able to download by chapter).
5. E-books should allow for unlimited concurrent users. There should not be a limit on concurrent users, nor should there be any kind of "check out" period.
6. The library will purchase a print copy of a book owned in e-book format (or vice versa) at the request of a subject selector. The selector should indicate explicitly that an added copy in the alternate format is desired.
Rathemacher 12/29/11, rev. 1/4/2012
2/2016: See Charlotte Initiative http://charlotteinitiative.uncc.edu/.
2024: See Library Futures, Principles on Library Ownership of Digital Books https://www.libraryfutures.net/post/introducing-principles-on-library-ownership-of-digital-books