This is an announcement of a new ILL pilot program in partnership with Proquest and Prospector for lending and borrowing E-books. This pilot program is going to operate very much like the SILLVR streaming video program, where requests will be placed through Prospector and then fulfilled via email.   A request will be placed by a patron in Prospector and sent to a lending library.   The lending library will generate a URL which will be active for two weeks and will send that URL and its expiration date to the patron’s borrowing library system. Once the borrowing library receives one of these emails, they will simply have to copy and paste a little bit of information from the email into the fulfillment template, which will also be included in the email sent from the lender.  Then the URL and expiration date will need to be emailed that to the requesting patron at their email address on file with the borrowing library system.   The lending period is 2 weeks, and renewals will not be allowed.   Patrons will be able to download these e-books but will need to use Adobe Digital Editions for digital rights management purposes.  The download will only be good for the duration of the loan.   If a patron needs the book for longer they will have to place a new request in Prospector.  

We are currently in the testing phase of this program, and at this time there are only a few eligible titles requestable in Prospector.   The pilot is scheduled to go live in January 2022, and will feature all owned content from the following publishers: Taylor and Francis, Oxford, New York University Press, Bloomsbury, Duke University Press, and Brill. 

As of right now we have two libraries that have agreed to be lenders, Auraria Library and Colorado Mesa University/Tomlinson Library.   If you have a Proquest e-book collection and would like to be a lender please let us know!   One important detail to know if you wish to be a lender is that lending a title will use up one of your ‘licenses’ for the e-book for the duration of the loan.  For example, if you have a 3-user license for an e-book and lend a copy, you will only have 2 available users left for the 2 week duration of the loan.   If you have a 1-user license, then you will have 0 available uses for the 2 week duration of the loan.  If you have an unlimited user license, then there will be no impact on your own patron’s ability to use the loaned materials.  

If you have any questions about any of this please contact Philip Gaddis at Auraria Library:  philip.gaddis-at-ucdenver.edu

Thank you!