California Digital Library on Ebook Platform Usability
In case you had overlooked the announcement earlier in April, the California Digital Library released a report on Ebook Platform Usability, with specific attention to two leading aggregators. cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2025.... Worthwhile.
— Jill ONeill (@jillmwo.bsky.social) April 30, 2025 at 10:26 AM
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From the Executive Summary
Released the first week of April, this review of the usefulness of two aggregator platforms is a snapshot of the pros and cons of these platforms at the beginning of 2025. The University of California Ebook Usability Common Knowledge Group’s (EUCKG) has periodically released their assessments of vendor platforms (see an initial 2019 assessment of platforms from Cambridge, Elsevier and Wiley).
From the Executive Summary of the report:
We note that aggregator platforms face different challenges than publisher platforms, particularly given that they supply books from hundreds of different publishers. The format of the ebook and the usage rights and restrictions can vary greatly between publishers, leading to a less uniform experience for users. Books may be available in PDF, EPUB, and/or HTML formats; they may be DRM-free or downloading and printing may be heavily restricted; publishers may only offer a 1-user license while others allow for unlimited simultaneous users, to name just a few differences. While we found that the number of ebooks in different formats can vary greatly between the aggregators and publishers they work with, there is one positive: the percentage of books available DRM-free has been steadily increasing, as has the availability of books in both PDF and EPUB formats.
The NISO community may find the discussions of discoverability and in-book navigation to be of particular interest and value.