Disability Support: Digital Right Management

DRM books

DRM ebooks have restrictions on printing and downloading.  You can download either the whole book or a single chapter to your device for a limited period of time. 

DRM books normally need additional software to download to your device e.g. Adobe Digital Editions. 

You are usually also allowed to download a small portion of the book permanently as a PDF.  How much you can download permanently will depend on the rights associated with that book which are set by the publisher.   

Ebook Central and EBSCO ebooks are examples of ebook providers with DRM content.                                                              

DRM-free books

DRM free ebooks are published with no downloading restrictions so you can download the entire book in PDF or EPUB format.

Whatever you download, you must not share it. It's for your personal educational use. You are also bound by copyright law regarding what you do with the download. You can print 10% or one chapter. The library prioritises buying DRM-free books.

If you like to highlight or annotate texts, you may find using the online reader more helpful than the downloaded PDF.   

Taylor & Francis, Cambridge, Bloomsbury, Elsevier and Springer are examples of DRM-free ebook providers.