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Controlled Digital Lending…  
On the Quick and Cheap
Drew Baker, Digital Theological Library
James Darlack, Vanguard University of Southern California
Thomas E. Phillips, Digital Theological Library

ABSTR AC T In Summer 2020, the Digital Theological Library imple-
mented a Controlled Digital Lending program in order to make 
print theological resources available online. This “Listen-and-Learn 
Session” reviewed the background of this initiative, the different 
systems used for implementation, and the end-user’s experience of 
using the Controlled Digital Lending collection.

BACKGROUND (JAMES M. DARLACK)

In the Summer of 2020, academic libraries were still coping with 
the complexities of serving students and faculty during a global 
pandemic. Shutdowns forced many schools to investigate creative 
solutions to provide crucial content to patrons. Brandon Board and 
Karl Stutzman (2020a, 2020b) of Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Semi-
nary (AMBS) presented one such solution at the Atla 2020 Annual 
Online: “Controlled Digital Lending: An E-book Solution When There 
Is No E-book?” In their presentation, they demonstrated their use 
of the Internet Archive to provide a “Controlled Digital Lending” 
collection. AMBS sent books to the Internet Archive, and the Internet 
Archive then digitized the books, stored the hard copies, and made 
the scans available through its digital interface. The AMBS endeavor 
in Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) sparked the curiosity of librar-
ians associated with the Digital Theological Library (DTL; https://
www.digitaltheologicallibrary.org), who sought to implement a CDL 
program of their own.

Controlled Digital Lending allows a library to share digitized 
versions of print materials in place of physically loaning the items to 
patrons. For this practice to comply with copyright law, it is impor-
tant to control how many individuals have simultaneous access 
to the digital copy, how long they can use it, and whether they are 

https://www.digitaltheologicallibrary.org
https://www.digitaltheologicallibrary.org


234  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

able to copy and distribute the digital item. The Position Paper on 
Controlled Digital Lending (https://controlledigitallending.org/state-
ment) proposes that for a CDL program to be successfully imple-
mented, a library needs to:

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 loan to one that is analogous to 
physical lending; and

6) use digital rights management to prevent wholesale copying 
and redistribution.

Thus, for DTL to implement a CDL program, the requirements 
above needed to be fulfilled. 

With the Fall 2020 semester quickly approaching, DTL was inter-
ested in implementing a CDL solution quickly. The AMBS presenta-
tion (Board and Stutzman 2020, 158-9) noted multiple limitations of 
using the Internet Archive to implement CDL in an academic setting, 
so DTL pursued other avenues. Unfortunately, after a review of vari-
ous systems that offer Digital Rights Management (DRM) we were 
not able to find any one service that fulfilled the necessary require-
ments while offering a long-term inexpensive solution. 

It was our desire to implement a system quickly, even though it 
might need refinement. We also wanted a system that could handle 
a large volume of digitized texts, as DTL had begun acquiring print 
volumes from library closures. Of course, expense was certainly an 
issue – including the hidden cost of open-source solutions. Given 
these parameters, we decided to improvise by upgrading and pull-
ing together services that DTL was already using, while obtaining 
digitization equipment that could handle a high volume of scans.

IMPLEMENTATION (THOMAS E. PHILLIPS)

We made the early decision that we were not going to use any of the 
books digitized for CDL as a circulating collection, so we did not need 

https://controlledigitallending.org/statement
https://controlledigitallending.org/statement


Listen and Learn Sessions  235

to coordinate physical loans with digital access. We were also free 
to guillotine books for faster processing through scanners equipped 
with an automatic document feeder. To maintain the “owned-to-
loaned” ratio for digital access, a minimum of three copies of each 
CDL title were obtained (though only one copy is guillotined for the 
digitization process). These physical copies are then placed in storage.

For management and discovery of CDL titles, we used our exist-
ing subscription to OCLC’s WorldShare Management Services and 
their Collection Manager to create a collection of links to CDL books 
that is seamlessly integrated into OCLC’s WorldShare Discovery. The 
links listed in Collection Manager would point to LibGuide pages that 
listed works by a particular author or works in a particular series 
or set. We upgraded DTL’s LibGuides subscription to LibGuides CMS, 
so that these pages could be IP-authenticated through EZProxy. The 
LibGuide pages would then hold links to the digitized books that 
were stored on Dropbox along with passwords that gave access 
to the documents. We upgraded to Dropbox for Teams in order to 
increase storage capacity and to facilitate collaboration between 
staff responsible for digitization and staff responsible for metadata. 
In Dropbox we disabled the ability for the end user to download, 
save, or copy and paste material from the scans. This combination of 
technology (along with the high-volume scanners and book cutters) 
cost approximately $5,000 in start-up capital. Within our first eight 
months, we digitized over 12,000 titles. Since the start of the CDL 
program, we have learned that our investment in scanners, parts, 
and paper cutters is ongoing; for instance, we recently acquired an 
electric cutter to guillotine books for about $1,800.

USER EXPERIENCE (DREW BAKER)

Our goal was for the CDL collection to seamlessly integrate with 
our existing catalog of digital materials. Users discover CDL titles 
indistinguishably intermixed with our other holdings in WorldCat 
Discovery. (Other DTL libraries that use WorldCat Discovery can also 
integrate the CDL collection through OCLC’s Collection Manager.) 
Upon selecting a CDL title and authenticating through EZProxy, users 
are brought to an IP-gated LibGuides page with a link to the title 
and a note about the password needed for access to the Dropbox 
file. Upon selecting the link and entering that password, users are 
brought to a non-downloadable, non-printable PDF. LibGuides and 



236  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

Dropbox provide several layers of security in order to create a fully 
controlled environment for the digitized titles, while the full setup 
provides an easy-to-use and seamless discovery platform for our 
CDL collections.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Board, Brandon, and Karl Stutzman. 2020a. “Controlled Digital Lend-
ing: An E-book Solution When There Is No E-book?” Presented at 
Atla Annual, June 19. https://vimeo.com/439074597.

———. 2020b. “Controlled Digital Lending: An E-book Solution When 
There Is No E-book?” Atla Summary of Proceedings 74: 157–65. 
https://www.doi.org/10.31046/proceedings.2020.1857.

Burger, John, James B. Harper, Lisa A. Macklin, Robin N. Sinn, 
Tucker Taylor, and Robyn Weisman. 2021. Future Thinking: 
ASERL’s Resource Guide to Controlled Digital Lending for Research 
Libraries. Atlanta: ASERL. http://www.aserl.org/wp-content/
uploads/2021/03/Future_Thinking__ASERL_Resource_Guide__
March-2021.pdf.

“CDL Implementers.” 2021. Accessed June 17. https://sites.google.
com/view/cdl-implementers.

Hansen, David R., and Kyle K. Courtney. 2018. “A White Paper on 
Controlled Digital Lending of Library Books.” Preprint. LawArXiv. 
https://www.doi.org/10.31228/osf.io/7fdyr.

IFLA. 2021. “IFLA Statement on Controlled Digital Lending.” The 
Hague: International Federation of Library Associations and 
Institutions. https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/93954.

https://vimeo.com/439074597
https://www.doi.org/10.31046/proceedings.2020.1857
http://www.aserl.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Future_Thinking__ASERL_Resource_Guide__March-2021.pdf
http://www.aserl.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Future_Thinking__ASERL_Resource_Guide__March-2021.pdf
http://www.aserl.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Future_Thinking__ASERL_Resource_Guide__March-2021.pdf
https://www.doi.org/10.31228/osf.io/7fdyr
https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/93954

