Digital Delivery

About Digital Delivery

CRL member libraries may request digitization of CRL's holdings when copyright allows. Requests take approximately ten working days to complete.

To request digitization of material member libraries submit an Interlibrary Loan request to CRL.

  • Scans are searchable whenever the source material supports OCR processing.
  • CRL will digitize longer runs with advance notice to meet research or instruction needs. 
    • Note we will limit the number of items digitized for a particular request within a time period. This is to ensure other CRL members receive equal service levels.
  • All digitized items are retained in our digital collections platform for future consultation by the CRL scholarly community which can be accessed here.
  • Depending on copyright, digitized material are made available open access or are limited to members use only.
  • CRL scans to provide copies for research purposes. We do not supply high resolution image reproductions for publication or commercial uses.

Digitization requests are evaluated based on:

Copyright: Copyright is a primary consideration for reformatting material. In the United States copyright protection generally lasts for 70 years after the death of the author. If the work was a "work for hire", then copyright persists for 95 years after the date of publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter. Anything after those criteria will require the researcher or requesting library to secure the permission from the copyright holder for digitization.  

Condition: Digitization is a convenience to researchers, but is also used to prevent damage or loss of unique and/or fragile materials in the shared CRL collections. Based on a requested item's condition we may elect to digitize a title rather than deliver the print or microfilm to a user. Condition may also limit digitization, particularly when we have brittle or badly filmed materials that are not suitable for scanning. 

Availability: CRL avoids digitizing materials that are otherwise freely accessible in digital format from digital sources such as, Google Books, the Internet Archive, and the HathiTrust Digital Library. We are unlikely to duplicate digitization that is freely available, unless our copy is unique or we can provide a better quality copy. 

Please send additional questions to Access Initiatives at our email.