We’ve just updated the “loan period” for full-ebook downloads on the ProQuest Ebook Central and EBSCO Ebooks platforms. This does NOT relate to downloading chapters, sections, or parts of ebooks! This is only about downloading a whole ebook (as one document). When this happens, a “copy” of the ebook comes out of circulation, as though it were a physical book on loan.
As of late August, the maximum loan period for full-book ebook downloads on ProQuest and EBSCO ebooks is seven (7) days at a time. The granular details are:
Single-user ebooks (ie., ebooks that only one person can view at once) are not available for full-book downloading, because doing so makes them completely unavailable to anyone else. Our single-user ebooks are more likely to be etextbooks from publishers who demand heavy DRM, meaning that these ebooks are more likely to be needed for courses. And so we need to keep them available for sharing.
With three-user ebooks, two copies can be full-book downloaded (taking each out of “circulation” for 7 days), but the third “copy” will remain available online.
Unlimited-user ebooks can also be full-book downloaded for 7 days, but there are no limits on how many people can do so at once.
Fun fact: the vast majority of ebooks (>90%) from these two vendors fall into this last category of unlimited simultaneous use. This includes roughly half a million ebooks.
The purpose of this change is mainly to make these parameters consistent across these two large platforms. With any questions, please let us know (csu@ualberta.ca).