The digital book in the library: a work-in-progress in distribution

Abstract

The article aims at presenting how digital books reach public libraries and how institutions can share this bibliographic heritage with their users.
Libraries, more and more involved in digital products, are experiencing a real explosion in the number of users who utilize these resources, but they are also facing the costs and choices necessary to implement or share non-physical collections. Some suppliers are available on the market, often content aggregators, available to facilitate the task of providing quality service, and to protect producers’ revenues at the same time. The other aspect that the article takes into consideration is related to the protection and management of digital rights, which until October 2021 made access to content difficult for users. In the past few weeks now, new standards for protection have been emerging, which will hopefully be increasingly adopted by producers.