Patron Driven Acquisition of Publisher-hosted Content: Bypassing DRM

Academic library patron driven acquisition (PDA) of ebooks on aggregator platforms is gaining steam. Although there are many advantages to this model, aggregated ebook content is still hampered by digital rights management (DRM). Publisher hosted ebooks are often DRM free, providing user-friendly access to ebook chapters that emulates ejournal article access. Librarians and libraries should build win-win-win partnerships with aggregators and publishers that facilitate centralized PDA on aggregator platforms which results in library ownership of purchased books on DRM-free publisher platforms. Ultimately, a simpler solution would be to reduce the restrictiveness of digital rights management on aggregator-hosted content, which might eventually happen. But can we afford to wait