ADE: Various issues with library (limited time use) editions

[Guest]

Hi!  We are in the midst of a college library pilot of a large number of books in ADE.  There are a number of immediate program limitations that I have encountered.

The system is set up so that a patron can take a book out for a 24 hour or 7 day loan period.  There are unilmiited numbers of simultaneous users.  The files have a limit on the copy and print portions.

The issues i have encountered thus far:

1. Sloppy / wasteful file storage and duplication: Every time a copy is checked out, even it is the same book, a new "urllink.acsm" file is created in the downloads directory, and when that file is clicked (why doesn't the Adobe Digital Reader automatically scan for new ones by the way when it opens?) a new copy of BOOKNAME.pdf is created in the Documents/Digital Editions directiory.  Even in the first week that I have been experimenting with the system, for example, I have six duplicate files in the "Digital Editions" directory.  All the older ones are just expired copies of an identical book.
   
   
   1. Suggestion: The system should overwrite older copies of an identical book, not create an identical file with 0001, 0002, etc. appended to the file name.
      
      
2. Bookmarks not saved after a book expires and is re-checked out: If I download a book, read it, make annotations, and then my loan expires, I have to recheck out the book.  My annotations are all lost!  This is a huge limitation for any book borrowing system that is going to work for the academic / teaching market.  What is frustrating is that I discovered how easy it is to trick the system.  Your annoations are saved in a file called "BOOKNAME.annot" in the "Documents/Digital Edictions/Annotations" directory (on a Mac).  When the book loan expires and you re-check it out, the system will create a NEW "BOOKNAME.annot" file, overwriting the old one.
   
   The workwaround is simple--before you open up the new copy of the book, rename the old file (e.g. BOOKNAME.annot.copy).  Now restart the program and make a single annotation in the new copy.  The program will overwrite the previous BOOKNAME.annot.  Close the program, Then BEFORE OPENING the reader again, delete BOOKNAME.annot and rename BOOKNAME.annot.copy to BOOKNAME.annot. 
   
   When you open the book again, Voila!, the "old" bookmarks have been restored.
   
   I have no idea why the program would ever be designed this way.  I have no idea why an IDENTICALLY named file of annotations is not recognized by the system, but when you delete a file and rename a copy to the original name, suddenly the system recognizes it.
   
   
   1. Suggestion; FIX THIS!  Annotations that are tied to a book title should remain tied to that book title, no matter how many times you have to re-check out the book.  Otherwise your system is completely unusable as a library check out / return reader.
      
      
   2. Suggestion 2: ALLOW BOOKMARKS/ANNOTATIONS TO BE PRINTED!   This is part of every E-Book reader out there.

[D3UH]

Completely agree with everything you've just discussed. Commenting from 2018, I see that nothing has been done about this since the report was made in 2011.

[pxcAndy]

This drove me mad. I’m a third of the way through my MBA strategy textbook on a 21-day loan. It expired, so I borrowed the book for a further 21-day period- all highlights and annotations gone. Worst of all - I’m on iPad, so no tweaking in the back end to retrieve the work.

This has really put me in a bad mood.

Yes, I know, before you say it - I was not particularly strategic in how I handled this.

[reader1]

Thank you so much for your tip, I got to restore my old annotations and saved about a hundred working hours after my bookloan had expired. Many websites told me that restoring in ADE is not possible but thank god I kept on googling. It is unbelievable that this thread is already almost 10 years old and Adobe has not done anything to help its users.

Hopefully more people will find this thread and be able to restore their annotations and notes.

[Will.edu]

You are a God send. I'm working on my final paper and my loan had just expired on the book and I thought I had lost all my annotations and notes. Thank you so so so so so much!

[Sarah27624520wfjt]

OVER TEN YEARS LATER, YOU JUST SAVED MY ASS! THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I'm reading Champlain's Premier récits de voyages en Nouvelle-France for a research paper, and I have dozens, if not hundreds of highlights and bookmarks, to use in my paper. Thank you so (so, so, so, so!) much, I had taken screenshots of the side panel to make sure they all transferred over, but it would've been so time-consuming to replace them all!

Side-note: for me, Adobe Digital Editions did NOT overwrite the original BOOKNAME.annot (which for me was originally BOOKNAME-1.annot for some reason), it created a new file: BOOKNAME-2.annot. However, deleting the latter file and renaming the former as BOOKNAME-2.annot still worked!

Seriously, thank you!