Controlled Digital Lending of Library Books in Canada

Date
2022-12-21
Authors
De Castell, Christina
Dickison, Joshua
Mau, Trish
Swartz, Mark
Tiessen, Robert
Wakaruk, Amanda
Winter, Christina
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Partnership Provincial and Territorial Library Associations of Canada
Abstract

This paper explores legal considerations for how libraries in Canada can lend digital copies of books. It is an adaptation of A Whitepaper on Controlled Digital Lending of Library Books by David R. Hansen and Kyle K. Courtney, and draws heavily on this source in its content, with the permission of the authors. Our paper considers the legal and policy rationales for the process—“controlled digital lending”—in Canada, as well as a variety of risk factors and practical considerations that can guide libraries seeking to implement such lending, with the intention of helping Canadian libraries to explore controlled digital lending in our own Canadian legal and policy context. Our goal is to help libraries and their lawyers become better informed about controlled digital lending as an approach, offer the basis of the legal rationale for its use in Canada, and suggest situations in which this rationale might be strongest.

Description
This article was first published in Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research.
Keywords
Controlled digital lending, copyright, digital exhaustion, fair dealing, information access, information policy, library, technological neutrality
Citation
De Castell, C., J. Dickison, T. Mau, M. Swartz, R. Tiessen, A. Wakaruk, and C. Winter. “Controlled Digital Lending of Library Books in Canada”. Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, vol. 17, no. 2, Dec. 2022, pp. 1-35, doi:10.21083/partnership.v17i2.7100.
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