Toolkit Introduction

What is a Digital Lending Toolkit?

BLC’s Digital Lending Toolkit is a collection of informational assets and resources to guide libraries and consortia in understanding different approaches to digital resource sharing and promoting broader adoption of these practices to expand access to our growing digital collections.

As scholarly formats and digital collecting practices have rapidly evolved, so too have the challenges in being able to effectively lend these resources, navigating complex intersections of access, ownership, and technical feasibility towards effective stewardship. This toolkit provides a platform to highlight the innovative work of resource sharing practitioners, libraries, consortia, and vendors seeking to develop new pathways to lending digital resources.

What Constitutes a “Digital Resource”?

For the purposes of this toolkit, a digital resource is a piece of content that is made available through a digital interface such as the internet, a computer, or a mobile device.

Digital resources may be born-digital objects (such as a whole e-book, an e-book chapter, or an audio/video file) or digitized resources derived from physical materials (such as a digital surrogate of a print book lent through controlled digital lending (CDL)). In its current iteration, the toolkit predominantly focuses on CDL digital surrogates, e-books, and streaming media (audio and video).

The primary audience for this toolkit are libraries and consortia of various sectors (academic, public, special, etc.) and, accordingly, digital resources are collected by these organizations to support the educational mission, learning objectives, or informational needs of the communities they serve. Given the broad nature of resource providers in the library and information ecosystem, digital resources may include assets hosted locally or externally by vendors and made available through library-specific interfaces, or resources locally created and hosted by libraries and/or consortia in institutional or digital repositories.

The comprehensive scope of this term is intended to reflect the evolving nature of scholarly resources and file formats that are currently lent amongst libraries or are desired to be shared across institutional boundaries.

Evolution of the Digital Lending Toolkit

Early development of the toolkit focused solely on controlled digital lending (CDL) given the specific nature and scope of our IMLS grant. After the release of a CDL Toolkit Survey, reviewing the results, and deeper engagement with practitioners, libraries, and consortia, we recognized that broadening the scope of the toolkit would allow for fuller representation of the robust digital lending practices actively implemented across the United States. We believe this more expansive landscape described in the toolkit represents the diverse realities of digital lending and the need to better articulate its nuances.

What's in the Digital Lending Toolkit?

Developing any toolkit, whether for home repairs or supporting library digital lending services, requires a range of tools and resources to support differing needs and contextual uses. The resources in this toolkit were selected through outreach to libraries, consortia, vendors, information organizations, and resource sharing practitioners, as well as an extensive search of existing presentations, publications, or other online artifacts. Please note that the majority of resources and contextualization about digital lending within this toolkit are based on activities and legal precedents within the United States.