Delivering Digital Education Content

Getting digital education content to teachers and students in every country of the world is a challenge for publishers. That is why AZARDI:Content Fulfilment (ACF) and the AZARDI Readings systems had to be developed. There was no other solution available.

The ACF system provides consistent presentation and behaviour of highly interactive education digital content on all platforms, screen-sizes and aspect ratios in all languages. Other available ePub reading systems are very platform and/or screen-size sensitive and are optimized for simple trade books rather than interactive digital education content.

What AZARDI:Content Fulfilment Does

AZARDI:Content Fulfilment (ACF) allows publishers to control the sale, delivery and use of their eBook content directly to content consumers with direct eCommerce or institution level agreements. It has a number of features to address the Internet bandwidth issues in developing countries and even delivery of digital content to remote locations that are off the Internet.

The transfer of eBook content from publisher to user is controlled using offers, agreements and rights management built on the ODRL (Open Digital Rights Language). This means a publisher can offer a very wide range of business options for different markets and users.

ACF works with the AZARDI reading systems to provide full content protection while empowering a wide range of digital content delivery and engagement business models. Content is transferred directly from ACF to the reading systems.

What Can Be Sold

1. Individual Books or Documents. This is a standard eBook eRetail model. The APIs allow book catalogues and User accounts to be presented and accessed from any website.
2. Collections of books or documents. This is particularly useful for collections of different subject textbooks and multi-part courseware as primary examples.
3. Subscriptions. There are date range subscriptions to match course and semester/term start and end dates; and period based subscriptions (Eg: From XX date for 90 days).
4. Loans. The library mode allows e-books to be available for a loan period to a controlled number of readers.

How the ePub Content Can Be Sold

ACF can deliver digital content in a number of packages:

1. ePub open. No rights management, although the downloads can only be done by a registered user.
2. ePub Watermarked. Comprehensive clear and encrypted watermarking in the ePub
3. Desktop AZARDI. Delivery to any AZARDI desktop reading system (Windows, Linux, MacIntosh).
4. Device AZARDI. Delivery to any AZARDI device reading system (Android, iOS)
5. Browser access.  Delivery to AZARDI in all major browsers.
6. Delivery cases 3, 4 and 5 are all managed under the rights agreement terms.

When e-books are converted to products, price and terms are attached to the ePub including:

1. Global pricing for all delivery options. Or:
2. Independent pricing for each delivery option
3. Download count allowed
4. Subscription terms and loan terms
5. Device count that can be used to access the content.

How the ePub Content Can Be Delivered

Getting content to teachers and learners in every corner of the planet takes more effort than just the Internet. Bandwidth may not be available or too expensive for many and interactive textbooks can be large. ACF can prepare packages for transfer to reading systems in a number of ways:

1. Individual online purchase from a bookstore and download of books from a personal account.
2. Bulk institution downloads for users in registered institutions including optional IP authentication.
3. Local WiFi side-loading (for semester updates in schools and colleges with restricted bandwidth particularly in developing countries) for bulk deliveries.
4. USB or laptop transfer when there are no network resources available.

ePub Reading Systems

The system uses AZARDI Readers as the target reading system. A unique proposition of the solution is that because there are AZARDI Reading systems available for all platforms, ACF can deliver content to any platform including all Desktops, browsers and mobile devices and tools and interfaces are consistent across all platforms.

ACF is designed to allow publishers to deliver to their markets. Publishers can white label the AZARDI reading systems and deliver their own digital content with their brand presence.

Open and watermarked ePubs can be delivered for any other reading systems but there is no rights agreement management available if non-AZARDI reading systems are used.

ACF only supports EPub2 and ePub3 formats. It does not support PDF or any other format.

Summary

Producing, managing and delivering digital textbook and learning content that is more than just a reproduction of a printed book is a significant challenge for education publishers. All files managed in ACF are ePub2 or ePub3, but it uses a custom transfer package similar to the Amazon, Apple, Kobo and others. This is transparent to the user, but necessary to ensure the security of the rights agreements and content.

EPub3 is far from an appropriate package with its focus on print book-like features. However it is the only generic specification available at present. This will be changing in the very near future with Web Packaging and other emerging standards and options.   

ACF is ready now for eBook Zero, Web Packages and any other content built on standard HTML5/CSS and Javascript. This is why it is essential for publishers to maintain their content in a format neutral production framework such as IGP:Digital Publisher. Once in IGP:Digital Publisher the content is ready for all changing market dynamics or conditions; and can be reused and extended in many ways.

AZARDI:Content Fulfilment delivers new business models for education and other publishers in a fast changing digital world.

Posted by: Richard Pipe

 

Links Releted to this Post

What Is a Digital Textbook in 2015

Multi-language Interactive Text Books

Deliver Books Subscriptions with AZARDI:Content Fulfilment

SVG Plus Javascript Plus Education Means SAPPs

Image Optimization for Textbooks

Conquering the Education Technology Hydra

ALL-IN - The AZARDI Learning Library