Digital Lending

Tutorial: How to borrow with digital lending

Watch the video or read the transcript below to learn more about digital lending.

Video Transcript

Digital Lending is the library practice whereby a library owns a book, digitizes it, and loans either the physical book or the digital copy to one user at a time.

Watch Digital Lending Explained for an animated illustration of this practice.

To access a book that’s available through digital lending, click on the Digital Lending at Internet Archive link* in the library catalog record. The location of the digitized copy will be listed as “Digital Lending” and the status will be Available. *If the status is In Process, the link for accessing the digitized copy will not appear.

In the Internet Archive, you’ll see a preview, including the title page and table of contents.

To borrow the book (renewable every hour, pending availability), click the Log In and Borrow button on the Internet Archive page.

The first time you do this, you will need to create an account for yourself by clicking the Sign up for free! link on the Internet Archive log in screen.

Once you’ve created an account, verified your email, and logged in, the button will change to Borrow for 1 hour. Click on that button and you will be able to view the entire book.

You can renew the book every hour as long as no one else is waiting to borrow it. If you are actively reading the book (turning pages) after the hour has passed and no one else is waiting to borrow it, it will be automatically renewed for another hour.

You can also listen to the book by clicking the headphones icon in the lower right of the book display.

Click the Return Now button to return the book.

If the book you want to read is checked out to someone else, you’ll see Borrow unavailable.

Visit Borrowing from the Lending Library for more information.

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