Unlike physical books, e-books are not actually owned by the purchaser. When we acquire an e-book we are actually entering into a license agreement to use the e-book content under a set of conditions imposed by the content provider.
In order to provide content to large groups of users, libraries must acquire an institutional license for the e-book. Institutional licenses are often significantly costlier than the personal e-book licenses available through retailers such as Amazon. Institutional licenses often regulate how the e-book is shared among library users, for example 1-user at a time, 3-users at a time, or unlimited simultaneous users. Some licenses also place restrictions on how many times the content can be used or on what features are available to the user (e.g. printing, saving, downloading, etc…).
