Your experience of e-books

[binkie]

Thanks, Nitrus, for letting me canvas for blatantly work-related information

I am part of the Knowledge and Thought Leadership team in an international commercial consultancy practice. I am currently looking at renegotiating the licenses for a range of online resources, and I'm hoping SF members can help me build up a picture of experience of, and attitudes towards, e-books. I am interested in your experience of using e-books, whether you buy them, borrow them from a library, download them from an online environment, or access them in the course of your work or study.

I do have a short list of questions for you to consider, but even if none of these seem relevant to your experience of e-books, I am still interested in hearing from you. The questions are not designed to test you or catch you out. If you don't have an answer to one, or any, of the questions, that's fine. Let me know your opinion, or your experience, outside of the questions anyway.

1. Do you prefer to access e-books as static documents (eg. PDF or EPUB), or as manipulable content (eg. Apple's Enhanced Editions)?

2. Do you print e-books, or parts of e-books, where possible?

3. What is your experience of digital rights management (DRM)? This might include restrictions relating to your e-book, such as a prohibition on printing or saving the file; a time limit on the amount of time before the file expires or is deleted from your hard drive or online account; or restrictions on the number of times you can access the e-book within a specific timeframe.

4. Have you made use of software to allow you to overcome DRM? (This is not a trick question: free and legal downloads are available to help you do just this)

If you have experience of obtaining e-books via any system supported by OverDrive, I would be very interested to know how you feel about the service. [If you obtain e-books from a public or academic library (including a school library) in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia or New Zealand, you are almost certainly doing so using a system provided by OverDrive.]

I look forward to hearing your views and experiences. Virtual confectionary (and actual gratitude) to everyone who responds Please feel free to PM me if you would rather not have your response show up on a public forum.