 Alright, I think it's about time to be getting started so. I know I know people will be joining in for a little bit but I don't I don't want to well with the schedule slip too much. So welcome. I'm Cliff Lynch, and you've reached the second day of the virtual event that's part of the fall 2021 CNI member meeting. We have a great session set of project briefings and an invited session to share with you today. And I just want to make a couple of very brief comments before we before introducing the first session. So, we're doing this, this virtual event in web meeting rather than the webinar mode that we had been using for prior virtual events. And it is that by looking at the participants you can see who else is part of the meeting and you can use the chat to talk either to everyone or to specific individuals if you see people you want to say hello to. We'll also be using the chat for questions that you may have for the speakers. We will try and take q amp a at the end of every presentation. However, we are on a pretty tight schedule and I can say from experience yesterday that there were some sessions where we really didn't have time to take. Hardly any questions. And certainly not all of them at most of the presentations. If you ask questions in the chat though, it may be that one of the presenters can respond to your question via chat either. Either during the presentation or after the presentation so that may be helpful as well. We have a couple of breaks scheduled during the course of the of the virtual event today which will go till a little after five Eastern time. In addition, there are going to be pauses of you know three or four minutes. Order of magnitude between each session as we just switch over presenters and things like that and we'll just put up a brief, you know, slide saying we'll be right back. So with that, I think we are pretty much set to go ahead. And so let me introduce our first session and speakers. So we have a session to open the meeting on control digital lending. This is an approach to sharing material that really I would say came into its own as an essential tool during the pandemic. And as a way of making available materials to people who couldn't get to physical materials in our libraries, or when our libraries were physically closed. Specifically today though is going to be around control digital lending in consortial as a way as well as individual library settings and I think this is a particularly important issue, as we very rapidly discovered that when physical libraries closed, we had a lot of operational issues with consortia that relied on the ability to do physical reciprocal borrowing between institutions and patrons that were in a common geographic region. So I'm very pleased to be able to welcome Nathan Mealy from Wesleyan University, Michael Rodriguez from the University of Connecticut, and Charlie Barlow who's the executive director of the Boston library consortium, who will help us to understand the current thinking and the current approaches on this more effectively. So welcome. Thanks for being with us and over to you. Thank you so much for that great introduction, Cliff. I'll go ahead and get us started and Nathan and Charlie will take on later sections of the presentation. So good afternoon everyone, or good morning, depending on your time zone. I'm delighted to welcome you to the CNI project briefing on collaboratively building the future for control digital lending. What we're hoping to do today is to introduce you to CDL so we have a shared understanding of its benefits and what it is. And also share what the Boston library consortium or to be LC has done in this space in collaboration with other groups. We'll also talk about what we are doing and what we're aspiring to do, and how you can contribute to these larger movement around control digital lending. I'm Michael Rodriguez as Cliff said I'm a collection strategist at the University of Connecticut library and with Nathan Mealy, I co chaired the BLC's original CDL working group, and we're both continuing to serve on the BLC CDL steering committee. Nathan and Charlie, if you just want to hop in and say hello to the group as well. Hi everybody. So I'm Nathan Mealy associate university librarian for discovery and access at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. As Michael mentioned, I was the co chair of the BLC CDL working group and I'm currently the co chair of the BLC CDL steering committee, which is more the implementation phase of control digital lending. And I'm Charlie Barlow and the executive director of the Boston library consortium. Great to have you with you all today. Thanks. I'm Charlie and Nathan. So just to level set with the group on what control digital lending is and what its benefits are CDL is essentially the digital equivalent of print library lending where a library can take a digital scan of a print book or other item that it owns, and lend that digital scan in lieu of the print to patrons under controlled conditions. And we'll talk a little bit more about the specifics on the next slide. If we hone in on the advantages of control digital lending at any scale. CDL has the ability to support patrons who are quarantined or traveling, who may be studying remotely or online, studying abroad or on sabbatical for example. It can facilitate access to materials for patrons with print disabilities so who would no longer potentially no longer have to request special accommodations to engage with print collections. It can support anyone who's unable to access physical materials for wide number of reasons. It can also foster equitable access to library resources and online and hybrid educational environments, as well as situations in which institutions may have multiple campuses that are geographically distant from each other, with those physical collections primarily based at a single campus. And it also reflects that digital delivery of library resources has become the norm, not the exception. And this has been a fact that has been building for many years well before the pandemic, which has certainly accelerated that expectation among our patrons. So control digital lending can improve environmental sustainability by reducing the economic and environmental costs of shipping material among library locations, as well as preventing loss or damage to print items as a result of shipping or circulation, which you can see would be beneficial in the cases of shared print programs, archives and special collections or any, any situation in which the print items may be too rare or fragile to handle routinely. CDL really has a transformative effect in this regard in terms of opening up access to that long tail of material that our patrons need but is not available in electronic format whether through publishers or through the public domain. Some core principles of how CDL as a mechanism operates. The first principle is that a library must own a physical illegal copy of the physical book acquired by purchase or through a gift. The second is that the library must maintain an owned to loaned ratio simultaneously lending no more copies than it legally owns. What this means in practice is that the digital scan can be loaned only one patron at a time, and that the print book has to be removed from circulation and patron access while the digital scan has been loaned. The library must use technical measures i.e. digital rights management software to ensure that the digital copy cannot be copied or redistributed. So in other words, if the, if the digital scan is loaned that loan expires and the patron loses access after a certain period, and the patron is not able to keep that item indefinitely or to share it with others. These principles were articulated in a white paper on control digital lending of library books that was created by Kyle Courtney and David Hansen and I certainly encourage anyone to read it if they're interested in in some of the legal frameworks and mechanisms for CDL. I wanted to close this particular section with a quote from library futures, which is an advocacy organization that champions to write to equitable access to knowledge. They released a policy document on CDL fairly recently and that document has a great line that states that through CDL libraries can amplify what they do best by meeting communities where they are both physically and digitally. Cliff touched on this point during the pandemic of course CDL as efforts and engagement around CDL dramatically accelerated the white paper that laid out the legal foundations for CDL was published in 2018. And some groups like the Internet Archive and its open library program were implement had implemented a version of CDL for a number of years but you really saw interest and engagement among libraries accelerating in 2020 when the pandemic shut down physical access to so many collections. We saw a wide range of CDL solutions being built to meet local needs, primarily electronic course reserves. The solutions were designed for local needs, they were not designed to be scalable. And in general they were cobbled together solutions using box or Google Drive, or other ad hoc software. We also saw national interest groups emerge and engage with CDL. The CDL implementers forum is a great example of this where people from libraries and allied organizations were interested in CDL. People who were interested in CDL came together for informal meetings and information sharing venues to talk about their implementations, their ideas and their questions. The CDL co op also formed. This is the consortial approaches to CDL group, which is sort of umbrella organization for consortia that are interested in CDL work at scale. Higher profile statements by national and international groups. There is a CDL position statement supporting CDL that has garnered dozens of signatures from libraries and consortia. And recently IFLA also released a statement that powerfully makes the case for control digital lending on the international stage. This backdrop, the Boston Library Consortium convened a CDL working group in September 2020. The group was charged with investigating delivery mechanisms, technology workflows policies copyright and legal issues shared storage solutions, and other actions related to a potential consortial implementation of CDL among interested BLC member libraries. The working group consisted of 14 staff from 11 member libraries out of the 20 libraries in the BLC, along with Charlie Barlow as the BLC's executive director. We focused on three major areas the first was researching the national and global CDL landscape and really engaging in the field, embedding ourselves in these organizations and ad hoc groups that emerged in during that period. And also making sure that we had opportunities to gain and share knowledge in this space. Secondly, we engaged extensively across the BLC community we had multiple forums and listening sessions with BLC communities of interest and committees whose work pertained to CDL in some way, for example, our resource sharing access services technology, special collections, collection management and other groups within the BLC. We also engaged directly with the BLC Board of Directors as well. And finally we consulted with a range of external organizations and I, I can't tell you how many meetings Nathan and Charlie and I and other members of the working group had with everyone from the Internet Archive and Digital Public Library of America and major vendors such as RIS and Project ReShare and OCLC, but really embedding ourselves in the space and doing advocacy work and learning what the possibilities were for CDL at a consortial level. We published our final report in September and summer of 2021. The report is called Consortial CDL Implementing Control Digital Lending as a Mechanism for Interlibrary Loan and it's linked from this slide. The recommendations of the working group were to proceed with consortial CDL as a mechanism for ILL and the Board of Directors endorsed this direction. The source of all this work, three core observations emerge. The first is that CDL is for ILL as a mechanism for ILL is an extension of existing resource sharing practices that fits naturally into those workflows and frameworks. The second is that the commercial technology market is failing library's desire to implement CDL for a number of reasons that my colleague Nathan will get into shortly. The solution to this is a consortial approach that will enable us to scale impact and investment. I'll hand things over to Nathan to discuss these points in greater depth. Super. Thank you, Michael. The first observation there about CDL extending resource sharing practice was a really pivotal one for the group's work because it really helped us focus our thinking and our energies on where to take CDL, both for the BLC and for the library world in general. But in this case in particular, we saw CDL extending existing practices in two ways in a legal sense where CDL really extends under the same umbrella protections that are afforded to interlibrary loan. And so it's a practice that is we felt comfortably fell within existing legal practices of libraries have been engaged in for a long time, but also in a services sense. We have existing resource sharing systems and existing practices that readily adapt to to providing materials via CDL. And, and overall, what we really felt strongly about was that CDL is not so much a new service for libraries, but is an it is really an extension of services that we're already providing. We have a long history of digitizing materials and lending them both to our patrons and to patrons at other libraries. And we felt like that it was important to recognize this fact that seeing CDL as not a brand new service that we had to think up, think of it and develop from the ground up, but that we already have a lot of the knowledge, a lot of the practices, a lot of the experience and, and largely have the systems that will enable us to do this now and, and so the learning curve is not as steep as as initially might you know libraries were seeing it as. And so this was a really important conceptual element for our group. And ultimately the takeaway from this is really emphasizing the fact that we don't want to reinvent the wheel. When moving forward with CDL, we want to take advantage of existing knowledge and practices that we have now, but from that experience with resource sharing. Really drawing on that to inform how we move forward with CDL. And I'm particularly avoiding the pitfall of the cost and the time and energy that would be sunk into the work if we really saw CDL as something that we had to start from scratch. You know, one other aspect I think it's important to note is that we also don't want to replace existing successful services with CDL CDL is very powerful but it does come with these usage constraints that will that are important to be aware of. And we have some services particularly digitization services related to patrons with disabilities that don't, we can offer without the same constraints and so we don't want to substitute CDL for these services that offer patrons more flexibility where it's appropriate. Finally, following on from this, the BLC ended up focusing attention on implementing CDL as an extension of the resource sharing practices. This our consortium have been evolving for a long time and had been very successful with. Next slide please. And then what's really what was really quite fascinating is as we started to look at the existing systems we had for resource sharing and talking to the vendors of the who created and maintain those systems. It really became a pair that there was a significant disconnect between what libraries were aiming to accomplish and where the vendors were at in the technology market in general, in being able to meet that vision. So we are ideas are really sort of crystallized in this article that we published on the scholarly kitchen back in September, where we explore this data technology market and in particular its impacts on CDL. And a core aspect of our of our concern was the risks posed the CDL by the level of consolidation in the technology market. And what we've seen is with CDL in particular with the technology market in general has been suffering from consolidation for a long time to the point where increasingly there are fewer options for libraries to someone implementing service X, Y or Z. And we have many cases where there may only be one viable solution for a library. And when it came to CDL that meant that we're the libraries are who all of a sudden in 2020 desperately wanted to implement CDL we're looking at a very small number of vendors who were who are capable of providing that sort of service and we're really lying on them in a way that they meant they weren't prepared to come through on in all honesty. And that lack of substantial responses really kind of continued even to today you know we've seen that OCLC, who is the core vendor for resource sharing has been pretty quiet up until right now. And actually risk the other significant vendor has taken a path that hasn't really meshed particularly well with the vision the BLC has for for CDL. And so, in response to this, the BLC looks for a path forward that could could return more power and more flexibility to the hands of libraries. And to look for ways to leverage the scale is Michael said to leverage the scale of consortia to both influence the shape of the technology market, but also develop this particular solution in a way that would be sustainable for libraries and and meet our needs in a way that we could have more say in for the for the long term, and overall suck consortia is a really key element to that and project research that I'll talk about a little bit later. Next slide. Thank you. So, you know, so this consortial aspect was very important for the BLC, obviously on one level. This was a consortial effort to explore CDL and the BLC is resource sharing infrastructure has been a key aspect of the consortia for a long time. We started from that level but we also came firmly to believe that the scale that consortia operate is a really key element in moving this initiative forward consortia offer scale at so many different levels they offer scale for funding scale for collections scale in terms of negotiating with vendors we have more leverage as a consortia and practically every case that we do as individual libraries. We have more resources staff resources right in existing knowledge basis and so that scales really super critical for an initiative like CDL that really needs libraries to come together and not just turn to vendors and rely on vendors for giving a solution that they think is most appropriate. And this, the, the, the scale piece is also quite critical in terms of supporting an initiative like product for sure or any really sort of open source initiative where, or let's say fledgling initiative, where building up the installed base of that of that system, that solution is really critical. And consortia can bring in, when a consortia joins a new, a new initiative they can bring in X number of members 20 members 40 members depending on the consortium, as opposed to the user based need to grow by one library at a time. And we felt like that was, that was very important here. In addition, the consortial level of layer of resource sharing is really important, you know, the basic model for resource sharing these days is, you see if you can fulfill locally then you turn your consortia next and then to the world after that. And so ensuring that that consortial piece is functioning fluidly to to leverage the collective collection is a really important aspect of this. And then lastly consortia ostensibly microcosms of the larger library world, where if we can develop a solution that meets the needs of consortia. We believe it's, it's, it's a logical leap to move from there to extend the solution to the library world in general. And then interoperability became a real, real consistent theme for us when we were talking with vendors. And resource sharing infrastructure that we have today is built on interoperability right, we've always been able to choose what what resource sharing tool we're using whether it's Iliad or, or Cleo or whatever system your library may use. We've been able to participate in OCLC with with any of those staff facing tools, we've been able to also use rapid right and rapid and OCLC essentially works side by side. Interoperability has been a core aspect of resource sharing. And we wanted, it was very important to us and get when engaging with vendors to emphasize that that can't change. And now we have standards in place. We have an ISO standard for for resource sharing we have a, there's a working group in ISO that's working on a CDL related standard and so these standards are there for vendors to take advantage of and, you know, obviously it's super important that they do so. And obviously interoperability gives libraries choice we don't want to see a future for CDL we were your boxed in that if you want to CDL you have to do it with this vendor, or if you want to do it in a certain way it has to be with this vendor. We want to ensure that CDL is essentially like an open playing field where libraries can choose the path that best suits them. And then lastly, interoperability ensures that we're able to continue to use the knowledge that we have when implementing CDL you if you don't have to switch the system the tool that you're using. That means you can continue to take advantage of everything you know about that to already to influence how you implement CDL. And I suppose if you have to implement a whole different tool just to support that one service and all your previous experience is not as relevant anymore. And all this ended up leading us to our engagement with project reshare reshare began its work in 2018 as an effort to build a community led resource sharing software. It's based on interoperability and so all the standards that are out there for interoperability reshare supports. It's both the it's community governed and the development of the software is led by that library governance structure. So far they've implemented the returnables module of the platform and they have a roadmap in place for non returnables and CDL as well as shared inventory. They've worked with a number of consortia, as well as individual libraries if you look at their member list is pretty extensive and includes both. But for the BLC, what was most important was that community governance that library led aspect, the consortial resource sharing which there's a model in place with rapid that is, you know, it's future is a little bit unclear and which is for the BLC and we believe for consortia in general is very important. It's open source it's it's committed they're committed to transparency, and that involves working with other vendors they work readily with every other vendor the space. And they really are focused on collective collections and leveraging those for consortia and so there was real alignment between the BLC and reshare on our visions for CDL. And so really early on a natural partnership began to form. To the point where at this point the BLC is is working to become a member of product reshare and making both staff and financial commitments to staff time and financial commitments time to help further the CDL work in a way that that aligns with the BLC's vision, and that we and that we also, you know, we believe extends out to the library world as well and a model that everybody would benefit from. Nathan. So, regarding the BLC is continuing efforts in this space. We talked a lot about the work of the working group. We also, when the recommendations of the working group are accepted in August and September of 2021. Part of that recommendation was to convene a CDL steering committee for the BLC that would help guide this implementation work. The steering committee is meeting now and it's focusing on several significant areas that I'll briefly talk about the first is really seeking ways to leverage consortial scale in our efforts. So looking at ways, for example, to facilitate digitization at a central level or shared storage of those digital files. So that each individual library will not have to digitize its own copy of a book in order to lend it. We also are engaging with vendors across the board as Nathan highlighted we are making a sustained commitment and investment in project reshare. But we're also continuing conversations with ex Libris and with OCLC and other vendors that are part of the resource sharing space. And OCLC in particular I think has not been particularly deeply engaged in the CDL conversations in the past but we've been having some very productive conversations with them recently as CDL increasingly becomes much more of a mainstream consideration across the industry. In regard to project reshare, we're continuing to pursue that partnership and and deepening the relationship. The BLC board of directors voted to make a $100,000 contribution to project reshare to further the development of CDL capacities, and reshare will be running fundraising matches with existing members as well as with potential development partners to pull together enough funding to to build out these capacities in their systems and their technologies. We've also been engaged in grant writing to seek support from external foundations to advance the this consortial vision for CDL for ILL and we've had significant successes in this space that we can't quite talk about yet but we are very very promising and very positive in terms of have seen commitments from funders and foundations towards control digital lending at scale. We'd like to end this presentation with a call to action for all of you for all the folks on this call. We encourage you to engage with your consortia about the value of control digital lending. We encourage you your library or your consortia to consider endorsing the CDL co op CDL for ILL statement which lays out the case for CDL as a mechanism for interlibrary loan. We encourage you to gain and share knowledge of CDL and of efforts around it by participating in initiatives like the CDL implementers group, the consortial approaches to CDL and other open forums. Today we encourage unifying vendor advocacy that so that from all of our different perspectives, we're telling vendors, we're delivering to vendors, a consistent message around the need for interoperability, and for control digital lending to be developed as part of existing systems for resource sharing. Before we get started, we hope that you'll consider contributing to reshare, whether that is staff time or funding or knowledge. That is all very welcome and encouraged in terms of supporting CDL for ILL development. I think we're now ready for the Q&A period. So encourage folks to go ahead and start putting your questions into chat. If you have any questions or typing them out, I'll invite Charlie and Nathan to chime in if there's any point they wanted to raise that we haven't quite touched on yet. And the only thing I would say is that I just emphasize that the all the work the BLC has done so far has been with an eye towards how do we facilitate libraries across the spectrum, moving forward with CDL, at the very least CDL for ILL. And that that's really our end goal here is why that call to action is really about getting engaged with our product reshare, getting engaged with CDLI and so on. I think we saw a potential future that was becoming more narrowly defined around CDL and how you would be able to implement it, and we weren't satisfied with that and want to see that horizon expanded for everybody. I think our presentation may have answered everyone's questions. Well, thanks. Thanks a lot to all of you for a really thought provoking talk and I see actually Roger has now entered a question into the into the chat so I'll let you go ahead with that if you'd like to I can read it aloud for everyone. Roger notes that one of the things that's particularly notable about these initiatives is the willingness of librarians to make substantial investments even when I understand there's at least some legal risk. Can you say a little more about the pragmatism and risk tolerance here. I can jump in and do my best to answer that Roger. I think that the CDL working group did a really excellent job of analyzing the legal risks that were on the table at least at the time and I think we've got a lot of work still to do with the steering committee but I think a lot of the time that we spent in formulating the initial recommendation to implement CDL for into library loan was supporting libraries to engage in it at the level to which they were either most able or most comfortable. So, for example, you know, allowing a library to determine which specific components of that collection was to be available or whether they might be borrowing libraries only versus lending, and so on and so forth and we go into that. To some extent in the final report around sort of the nature of sort of the opt-in aspect when we brought this to the BLC board. We wanted to be sure that even if an individual library couldn't participate right now today that they felt comfortable and enthusiastic ideally about the prospect of supporting their fellow members in the consortium. Thanks Charlie. I'm glad you're for the question and it looks like Tara Fulton has a comment. I'd also just like to note that individual BLC libraries recognize that their own lawyers will need to weigh in on the level of involvement we can make at the institutional level, but the board nonetheless supported the consortium, moving forward as leaders in this arena. Thanks Tara, would you like to comment on that. Just to say that I appreciate Tara as one of the BLC's board members for saying that to the audience today. Thanks Tara. So, I don't see any other questions it's Clef so I have a stupid question in another direction. I've just sort of lost track of what's going on here. So I've been following work that's been going on involving among others lyricists and the folks at NYPL who are working on simply E, which is essentially an ebook reader. And then I understand that ebooks are a different thing from control digital lending, but what I'm wondering is whether you can tell me anything about the interoperability between an app like simply as a as a way to deliver a piece of content that's being made available under control digital lending. Yeah, this is I think this is perhaps one of the perhaps this and the legal piece of the biggest challenges with CDL going forwards is that the legal challenge at least we know the nature of those challenges, but the technology piece. We don't know exactly what shape that'll take. And I think interoperability with things such as an ebook reader that would make the ebooks so much more so much more usable is totally an open question. So, so what I would say is what we have endeavored to do in relation to that challenge is to go back to the interoperability piece I emphasized earlier to really push with a vendor such as re-share or X-leavers or OCLC that their tools need to work with other tools such as ebook readers to facilitate the end user experience being as good as possible. And so ensure the standards are there to support that and that the vendors leverage those standards. But there's no question that that is CDL is an actual software that we can use to deliver services still vaporware and so we're working we need to work with these vendors to make sure that the solution that they develop provides for that sort of outcome you're describing as well as, you know, we need the tools to be fluid on the staff end right so because there's a lot of staff concerns around the volume of work associated with CDL so how do we make that as sustainable as possible. So I think in many ways I feel like it comes back to interoperability and and with ensuring the vendors engage with the solution on that level. To add to that Nathan, I know that the folks at Columbia University and other places that have been involved heavily and simply eApp development have been participating in these CDL conversations at the implementers forum and elsewhere, as well as on the also working group that is formed to develop recommended practices for CDL. So I think to to Nathan's point around interoperability I think that that's at the forefront of a lot of these folks minds as we as we build toward shared standards for for CDL. So I assume that you are connect your work is connected into the the new NISO working group as well. You're you're part of that conversation. Both Michael and I are members of that working group. Yep. Great. Okay, thank you very much for clarifying that. Hi all that is a wonderful question regarding the connections between the lending and ownership of licensed eBooks versus control digital lending and the print copies. I'm actually going straight from the CNI presentation to a talk at the amigos library conference about efforts to license and lend whole eBooks that we acquire from publishers. I think there are some really exciting opportunities to explore these two areas in parallel and maximize the shareability of books in electronic format. Whether those are coming from vendors and publishers or whether those are digital scans from our print collections. But yes as Charlie says it's that we could definitely hold an entire conference on that theme. Thanks. Thanks everyone for chiming in. And I see Nettie Legas has also weighed in with some comments about the NISO group so that's wonderful please keep your comments and questions coming in the chat and I'm sure as our presenters get a chance to field those they'll be happy to do so. I think that we're right at about time so I'm going to transition us to a very brief break now with the final thanks to our three wonderful panelists for bringing this great topic to the meeting, and all of our attendees and participants thank you so much. We're going to take about five minutes here to transition to our next speaker who will be Jefferson Bailey of the Internet archives for what I think will be a fascinating conversation on the Internet So with that, stretch your legs, take a break, and we'll see you back in five. Thanks everyone. Thank you. Thank you again for that great presentation. This is, this is really very, very helpful. And I'm really glad we had some of this conversation about how these various efforts are converging and coming together. We certainly are going to want to have folks keep us posted on what's coming out of that NISO working group going forward. So thank you again folks.