ReShare Digital aims to revolutionize ebook lending and other forms of digital resource sharing across libraries, ensuring wider access to digital materials for communities everywhere.
Project ReShare is now enhancing the ReShare platform and building on the foundations of its Controlled Digital Lending and non-returnables lending capabilities in order to deliver a new and comprehensive suite of tools designed to make sharing even easier than ever.
ReShare Digital is designed to empower libraries with support for lending of whole eBooks, articles, book chapters, special collections, and other portions of whole works that can be supplied via electronic delivery.
Initial features are scoped to include ebook lending capabilities and book chapter document storage and delivery. Many aspects of the existing ReShare Returnables product will be extended to support ReShare Digital, including load balancing algorithms, ISO 18626 messaging, and interoperability with local library management systems.
Roadmap
The ReShare Subject Matter Experts and Product Committee have scoped out a modular future for the ReShare Digital suite of products, to include functionality that will support :
Controlled Digital Lending – The lending of digitized surrogates of print books in lieu of shipping physical materials while maintaining a loan-to-owned ratio.
Digital Lending for other library-owned materials, e.g., Special Collections, Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Article Document Delivery – The providing of article files based on scans or providers of electronic content
*Book Chapter Document Delivery – The providing of book chapter files based on scans or providers of electronic content
*eBook Lending – The lending of licensed eBooks. Enables libraries to share their already-purchased ebooks with other items that have interlibrary lending permissions in their vendor licenses
Sharing of DRM-Free and Other Licensed Material
For more details, visit the ReShare Development Roadmap. The development of each ReShare Digital module will be prioritized by the ReShare members via a community voting process.
*Update: May 28, 2024 – Initial community prioritization efforts determined the project will begin work on eBook Lending and Book Chapter Document Delivery as soon as fundraising goals are met. Please visit the ReShare Digital Pledge Drive page for more information.
TIMELINE
Initial work on ReShare Digital began with the Boston Library Consortium’s leadership on Controlled Digital Lending tools in 2022, and the 2023 Minitex efforts which laid the foundations for non-returnable document delivery.
Project ReShare anticipates completion of major ReShare Digital development areas in 2024-26.
FUNDRAISING: Project ReShare is actively working to secure the funds the funds necessary to support the development of the full complement of ReShare Digital tools. The project’s software development efforts are dependent on the generous financial and software development contributions of the ReShare membership and interested community members.
Do you want to make ReShare Digital happen even faster? We invite you to join us in making ReShare Digital a reality for libraries!
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
- Community-first approach – solving the most pressing issues identified by ReShare members
- ReShare Digital is an umbrella initiative that builds on and grows the reach of the platform for groups of libraries
- Modular, not a monolithic one-size fits all
- Interoperable across a multitude of systems – make it possible to complete work in ReShare or your local environment of choice
- Standards-based – We are actively working to build out ISO18626 and other standards-based approaches to ensure maximum interoperability
- Strengthen, consolidate, extend the existing ReShare platform
- Format-neutral: Support for a unified resource access vision across print and electronic