Background: CDL

Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) is a mechanism for digital lending where a print resource is digitized and lent in a controlled manner akin to print lending.

The principle concepts of CDL were first articulated by Michelle Wu in her 2011 article “Building a Collaborative Digital Collection: A Necessary Evolution in Libraries”, which focused on the TALLO initiative (Taking Academic Law Libraries Online) in hopes of building more collaborative library collections across law libraries. Years of continued conversation and legal exploration of this approach to digital lending led to the release of two key resources: the Position Statement on Controlled Digital Lending by Libraries and the seminal 2018 White Paper on Controlled Digital Lending of Library Books by Dave Hansen and Kyle Courtney. 

The white paper articulates six requirements for controlled digital lending:

1. Ensure that original works are acquired lawfully.
2. Apply CDL only to works that are owned and not licensed.
3. Limit the total number of copies in any format in circulation at any time to the number of physical copies the library lawfully owns (maintain an “owned to loaned” ratio).
4. Lend each digital version only to a single user at a time just as a physical copy would be loaned.
5. Limit the time period for each lend to one that is analogous to physical lending.
6. Use digital rights management to prevent wholesale copying and redistribution.