Q. Does downloading an entire document (via Adobe Digital Editions) block other users’ access to it?

It depends…

• If the document is multi-user, it does not block other users’ access to it.  Other users on the eBook Central site will still be able to read the document online and even download it.
• But if the document is single-user-only, it does block other users’ access to it.  For the duration of the download period (7 days, unless it is returned early) users on the eBook Central  site will not be able to access the document – not even for online viewing.

Because of this, the default setting is for full-document downloading to be disallowed for single-user-only documents (unless the eBook Central  site has multiple copies of the same single-user-only document, in which case only the last one is blocked from being full-document downloaded).  The admin of the eBook Central  site can override this default setting.

All documents that are available on your site in subscription collections (e.g., Academic Complete) are multi-user.  Perpetual access (i.e., purchased) titles can be either single-user or multi-user.

One way to tell whether a document is single-user or multi-user is to open it in QuickView and look to see if there is a “Release this title” button.  If the button is there, it is single-user-only.  If there no button, it is multi-user.

Note that the download option of creating an image PDF of a chapter or page range does not affect other user’s access to the document.