It's clear that Controlled Digital Lending approaches are proving to be very important in maintaining continuity of research and instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, when physical collections at many institutions are effectively inaccessible. We heard quite a bit about this in our CNI Spring Executive Roundtables on Research Continuity (see https://www.cni.org/go/what-happens-to-continuity-and-future-of-research), as well as our Roundtable on Acquiring Instructional Materials (see https://www.cni.org/go/new-strategies-for-acquiring-learning-materials).

There have been a few recent developments on this that I've been remiss in sharing with our community, though I suspect many of you have already seen at least some of these from other sources. The first is the recent blog post by the Internet Archive in response to a lawsuit challenging their practices. See

https://blog.archive.org/2020/07/29/internet-archive-responds-to-publishers-lawsuit/

A few weeks ago, the Association of Research Libraries signed onto a statement in support of Controlled Digital Lending, see

https://www.arl.org/news/association-of-research-libraries-signs-statement-in-support-of-controlled-digital-lending/

I also note that the Internet Archive continues to offer a series of webinars introducing their Open Libraries program. This page has a schedule and registration links, as well as pointers to a number of other useful resources.

http://openlibraries.online/learn/

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI