One of the vital desLibris services is providing libraries with access to books under licenses which have been granted by participating publishers.
desLibris acts as an agent for its publisher partners, granting usage rights and protecting them. Libraries acquiring licenses from desLibris do so with the assurance that the publisher has legally granted those rights to desLibris, which in turn assigns them to its library customers and maintains the necessary protections against mis-use. These protections include IP-authentication (making sure that the user is coming from a licensed location) and digital rights management (DRM) protocols (which make sure that the book is being used according to the license model purchased.)
When they enter a contract with desLibris, publishers (content owners) are given a menu of rights options from which to choose, which include the models below.
There are basically only two classes of model: Subscription (Limited term access,) Perpetual (Ownership.)
Within these classes several variations exist.
- Perpetual licenses may be priced and sold based on the number of users allowed to read the book simultaneously.
License models should not be confused with purchase "plans," of which there are many, like "Demand-driven access." These not different license models, but simply different ways of buying and selling perpetual access licenses.
Most publishers allow both forms of licensing, although some restrict / disallow the subscription option for frontlist.
Many book titles in desLibris are not available under license in Subscription collections.
Subscription (Limited Term License) Terms
The desLibris Publisher License gives publishers the right to withdraw titles from subscription licensing without reason or notice. When that happens, the book will be withdrawn immediately from the collection, and a MARC delete record will be issued.
Perpetual Access (Ownership) Terms
These options are currently available on desLibris:
Multiple Simultaneous Users (MUPO)
This license entitles an unlimited number of users in a given library system to read/download or view a given title concurrently. The price of a MUPO license is 150% of the price of a SUPO license.
Single User (SUPO)
This license restricts usage to a single user. Under the desLibris DRM rules, a SUPO-licensed title may be Read Offline (or "borrowed") and read online by two users (one for each mode) at the same time (or "simultaneously.") If/when a second simultaneous user clicks "Read Online" or "Read Offline," the user receives a “please try again later” message.
Library Entitlements
When a library acquires a book under any license model, that library has an "entitlement" to the use of the book under the license terms of the purchase (limited term or perpetual.) The desLibris system manages these entitlements to insure that purchased rights are respected and unauthorized access prevented.
Public Documents Subscriptions
Public Documents are licensed to subscribers under Open Access terms. This means that any document title may be read, copied or downloaded from the library site without DRM limits. If desired, libraries may store Public Documents in local repositories.
Concurrent User Licenses
These models are used in subscription licensing to provide lower-priced access. They preserve the IP-authentication and library administrator features in the Library License, allowing any number of authorized users to be active on the library account for browsing, searching, previewing and exporting title lists. These limits apply only to "Read mode," which is initiated when a user clicks on the "Read" button to open a book for fulltext viewing.
Concurrent Users by Account or Site
Here limits are placed on reading access. A counter is set to limit the number of concurrent users permitted to be in “read” mode* on the site to the limit associated with the license fee paid.
A three-user site license would block reading access by additional users until the number of users in "read" mode falls below the limit.
Concurrent Users by Title
In these cases limits are placed on reading access for any given title within a collection, restricting the number of users permitted to enter “Read mode” for that title to the limit associated with the license fee paid.
A one-user title license would block reading access by additional users to that title until the first reading session is closed.
Notes
To maximize online book availability, downloads to personal devices may be disabled by account administrators.
Since online books are typically used for only brief intervals, these license models should be adequate for smaller libraries and organizations.
Where the limit is too low, administrators may instantly increase limits with a dashboard command, or may instantly purchase books in high demand.