The Digital Library, being digital, can only supply digital resources, such as ebooks. However, librarians, academic and public, in Ireland and abroad are not happy with the current ebook supply model. Reasons include:
Publishers simply do not make all their titles available digitally. A 2018 study found that of 904 popular textbooks, only 94 - 10% were available electronically. It is likely that the percentage has increased since then but by how much?
Some publishers do not make their ebook titles available for purchase by libraries but will make them available to be bought by individuals. You will see lots of textbooks for sale on Amazon, but they can only be read on Kindles. It's not feasible, or probably even permissible for libraries - especially digital libraries, to buy Kindles and stuff them full of ebooks.
Another tactic of publishers is to only make older, out-of-date editions of textbooks available digitally. For example, the ETBI digital library would love to purchase Rules and Guidance for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Distributors (The MHRA Orange Guide) 2022, but it's not available electronically. The previous edition, published in 2017, is available, but that's eight years old and so is of limited use.
It is also easier for larger publishers to make their titles available, smaller publishers in smaller countries may not have the infrastructure available to create digital titles or may be more reluctant to create digital titles as they may worry about cannibalising sales (i.e. people borrowing the ebook from the library as opposed to purchasing a copy themselves).
There are four licences used by the publishers on ProQuest eBook Central - one and three-user, unlimited and a credits system. Publishers use digital rights management software (DRM) to restrict ebook lending. The DRM software forces ebooks to act like hard copies of books, so that just as one library user can borrow one hard copy of a book at a time, DRM restricts a one-user licence ebook to being used by one user at a time and three users at a time for a three-user licence. DRM is also used to limit the amount of printing and copying of ebooks.
DRM-protected books downloaded to PCs can only be read by Adobe Digital Editions, last updated in April 2023. While this has not been confirmed by Adobe, there is speculation that they have withdrawn support for this app, therefore IT departments for cybersecurity reasons, may block use of the app to read ebooks.
eBooks can also be sold in "bundles" or collections. They are cheaper than buying ebooks individually, but you have no say in what goes into the collection and there can be a lot of filler or irrelevant material included, for example, a book on sewage systems in medieval Italy included in a business collection (a true story). The Digital Library subscribes to the EBSCO eBooks for FET collection, and it's excellent value, with lots of useful and relevant titles. However, the Digital Library can't choose what goes into that collection and maybe if it were up to us, we'd replace a few titles.
Publishers, on a whim, can decide to remove titles from general sale or from their collections. Part of a library's remit is collection development. This is rendered challenging if curated titles disappear from collections. In 2022, the publisher Wiley provoked fury in academia by withdrawing nearly 1400 ebooks from an academic ebook collection to which many academic libraries subscribe. Some of these books were out of print, which meant no alternative access was available and even if one or two copies were held in a library's print collection, what good is that to a class of 100 students?
There is no link between the cost of production of a pdf or epub file and the cost at which the ebook sells. Recent years have seen ebook prices explode. The UK-based academic publisher, Pearson was criticised for a close to 500% increase in ebook prices that saw the average price for a Pearson UK title single user licence increase from £31.73 to £190.38. In 2022, the Digital Library bought a single user licence for the title Brilliant Communication Skills for €8.99. Today, that same single user licence is available for €107.56. That's an increase of 1196%. However, the sad truth of the matter is that €107.56 - or £190.38 for that matter - is at the lower end of textbook ebook prices. The Digital Library had to decline a purchase request for a Human Resource Management textbook for which a single user licence would have cost over €1,100
Even renting the book for four weeks would cost over €1,000! The print copy is significantly cheaper at €72.99 (September 2025). Why the disparity? Partly it's concern that ebooks may cannibalise profits, and partly it's simply because publishers can do this - who's going to stop them and where else will you get the textbook you need?
Library budgets are fixed. If ebooks are required, and a publisher decides to increase the cost of an ebook by 500% again, then that means less ebooks can be bought by the library and also less money for other library purchases, such as databases. The Digital Library tends to purchase books outright from ProQuest eBook Central, but they have announced a move to a subscription model which could imperil future Digital Library collection development. Subscription content can disappear at the whim of a publisher (as with Wiley's withdrawal of the 1,400 books mentioned above). The eBook Central books purchased by the Digital Library are owned in perpetuity, but if ProQuest move to a subscription system, then libraries will be at the mercy of publishers who can choose to add and remove books from subscription collections.
On a practical level, teachers can perhaps consider using or creating open educational resources (OERs) to replace expensive textbooks. OERs are free and can be adapted to suit local situations. Here's a series of Electrical Fundamentals textbooks for written for Canadian electrical apprentices that could easily be adapted for use in Ireland.
The #ebooksos campaign in the UK and Ireland has tried to raise awareness of the inequities of the ebook market (here's articles from the RTE website and The Irish Examiner) and get the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (Ireland) and the Competition and Markets Authority (UK) involved, although the long-term success of the campaign remains to be seen. The monopoly nature of the academic publishing industry will continue to pose challenges to ebook cost and accessibility for time to come.
