Book Review: Digital Rights Management: The Librarian’s Guide

Abstract

As libraries continue to increase their digital offerings, librarians find themselves “at the intersection where the rights and demands of users and content owners often collide” (vii). With this in mind, the purpose of this book is to provide librarians with the knowledge to “influence ever-evolving DRM (digital rights management) in ways that enable them to best serve their users” (vii). Although several books have dealt with the concept of DRM, most address either the broad aspects or the side of the producer (for example, Digital Rights Management: Technological, Economic, Legal and Political Aspects, by Eberhard Becker et al. [Springer 2008] and Digital Rights Management: Protecting and Monetizing Content, by Joan Van Tassel [Focal 2001]). Even an earlier work focused on the librarian perspective, Digital Rights Management: A Librarian’s Guide to Technology and Practise by Grace Agnew (Chandos 2008), looked at DRM primarily through the lens of copyright protection.