Boston Library Consortium to Implement Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) For Interlibrary Loan, New Report Released

From the Boston Library Consortium:

The Boston Library Consortium (BLC) will implement controlled digital lending as a mechanism for interlibrary loan among its interested member libraries, under a new plan approved by its Board of Directors at their August 2021 meeting. In this resource sharing model, items that traditionally would be loaned physically could instead be digitized and lent digitally under controlled conditions.

The BLC has released a new public report, “Consortial CDL: Implementing Controlled Digital Lending as a Mechanism for Interlibrary Loan,” so that other libraries and consortia can benefit from the BLC’s work.

“The Boston Library Consortium was founded on a shared commitment to make resources more readily available,” said Dorothy Meaney, President of the BLC Board and Director of Tisch Library at Tufts University. “Consortial CDL powerfully expands and reimagines resource sharing across the consortium.”

Controlled digital lending (CDL) enables libraries to lend legally acquired materials in a digital format under conditions that emulate physical lending. With CDL, libraries limit the total number of copies circulating in any format to the number of physical copies they own, maintain regular lending period limits, and utilize digital rights management to prevent copying and redistribution. Under the new plan outlined by the BLC’s CDL Working Group, the BLC will work to implement CDL as a mechanism for its consortial interlibrary loan (ILL) activities.

Learn More, Read the Complete Announcement

Filed under: Libraries, Management and Leadership, News