“There is a danger that research libraries are adding e-books to their collections using agreements that significantly reduce users’ rights. There is some urgency to improve this situation before it becomes a de facto standard. The Task Group on E-Books makes two recommendations to the CARL Copyright Committee: to create or endorse a statement of principles for licensing e-books, and to create a model license for Canadian research libraries.”
So concludes the Copyright Committee Task Group on E-Books of CARL (Canadian Association of Research Libraries) in a recently-released report titled, E-Books in Research Libraries: Issues of Access and Use (MS Word – 16 pages including bibliography). Since it’s written by the Copyright Committee it does focus on issues of Fair Dealing, DRM, licensing and jurisdictional differences between Canada and the US. The literature review will prove useful to folks regardless of country though, as will the points made in the paper. It’s a good document, give it a read.