Library e-lending
Lending, as a system rather than a setting
A loan is not a sale with a timer bolted on. It needs a copy model, a queue, a return that happens without anyone remembering, and a report the funder will accept. DMR runs lending as its own thing, for public libraries, schools, universities and corporate collections.
How a loan runs
From request to automatic return
The borrower does four things. The last one is nothing, which is the point.
Borrow
The patron requests a title from your catalogue. If a copy is free under your licence model, it is issued immediately; if not, they join the queue.
Open
The file is fulfilled to their reading or listening application under a licence valid for the loan period only.
Renew or return early
A patron can hand a title back before the end of the term, releasing the copy for the next person in the queue.
Expire
At the end of the term the permission lapses and the content returns itself. No reminder email, no overdue notice, no conversation.
The parts a lending collection actually needs
Most of what makes lending hard is bookkeeping, not encryption.
- Copy models
- One-copy-one-user, concurrent-user, or metered access by number of loans or by period — set per title, because publishers do not all licence the same way.
- Holds and queues
- A waiting list per title, with the copy released automatically to the next borrower on expiry or early return.
- Loan periods you control
- Different terms for a reference work, a set text and a novel.
- Every format
- EPUB and PDF/A, and cohort-restricted video, from the same shelf.
And the parts your funder needs
Collection budgets get defended once a year with a spreadsheet. This is that spreadsheet.
- Loans by title and period
- What was borrowed, how often, and what sat untouched.
- Turnaway and queue data
- Which titles ran out of copies, so you buy more of the right thing.
- Cost per loan
- Reconciled against what each licence cost you.
- Cohort reporting
- For teaching institutions, usage by course rather than only by title.
Two sides of the same shelf
Lending is a publisher product too
If you run a library
You want a collection your patrons can actually borrow, on the devices they own, without a platform sitting between you and them. The reserve holds the titles you have licensed and enforces the terms you agreed — it does not decide what you may buy.
For libraries & institutionsIf you are a publisher
Institutional lending is a revenue line most small presses never open, because the licensing machinery is the obstacle rather than the demand. Holding your list in the reserve means you can say yes to a library that asks — on your copy model, at your price.
For publishersAccessibility is part of lending, not an exception to it
A lending collection that cannot be read by a patron with a print disability is an incomplete collection. EPUB 3 accessibility, NIMAS and DAISY production sit in the same group at NIMAS Master, so accessible editions can go on the same shelf rather than into a separate request process.
Tell us what your shelf looks like.
Collection size, the copy models your licences use, formats, and how many borrowers. We will come back with a lending model and what it costs to run.