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Digital Library Systems Group
Specializing in Dramatically Improving Print Collection Value ... especially for students, faculty, researchers, and scholars
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Maximizing Monographs
Academic libraries need full-text search for all of their monographs, but three problems have always stood in the way:
  1. Copyright law restrictions
  2. A belief that a library must digitize all of its books or even a large percentage
  3. 25-year-old data showing unaffordably high digitization costs per book

Both problems have almost completely vanished, while new technologies have greatly simplified the process:
  1. In 2015, Federal Judge Chin ruled that full text content can be retained for search.
  2. An academic library need only digitize 1-2% of its monographs to serve 80 to 90% or more of patron interests in monographs by moving the highest value books to a new type of Concentrated Collections Area (CCA), turnkey solutions available.
  3. A revolutionary new search-match discovery system called HotLinks that outperforms standard key word search and identifies whole chapters of interest with a high confidence for motivating users to make a trip to the library to digitize excerpts using a self-serve digitization system – access reports available (e.g. for budgeting).
  4. A highly efficient ILL workflow for monograph chapters that, with the newest, fastest KIC systems, [finally] makes digital document delivery (ILL) for monograph excerpts affordable, with 10 requests fulfillable per hour per worker – access reports available (e.g. for budgeting).
  5. Support for pandemics:
  1. Digital Rights Management (DRM) software that prohibits redistribution of digital content and is made for libraries to lend or distribute content digitized from their print collections.
  2. Content servers and an integrated client app that allows multiple forms of controlled access to content, including ©-Law Section 108 compliant access and controlled digital lending (CDL).

From the time Web search engines first appeared, academic patrons have wished for full-text search for all monographs in their library’s collections. While they could easily get the digital form using a fast KIC self-serve digitization kiosk, they could not search digitally for relevant content. Over time, this need for digital search became stronger and stronger, as evidenced by the steady decline in utilization of scholarly monographs across America.
DLSG
Strategy
Some library vendors try to do everything. Some try to be the best at a few things. DLSG tries to be best at a few things, mostly library technologies that require DLSG’s very innovative and specialized design and engineering abilities. As you may know, DLSG has never had much competition - a thousand academic libraries have KIC, BSCAN ILL, Opus, Click Mini, Bookeye and WideTEK digitization systems and scanners, including 90 of the top 100 academic institutions. To facilitate adoption, DLSG products integrate with special systems such as Illiad, Odyssey, Tipasa and Relais, and with integrated library systems (ILS) via standard SIP2 protocol.
Mission
To create technologies that maximize utilization of scholarly content in libraries for study, research and scholarly productivity by dramatically expanding digital access to print collections content, removing inefficiencies from the research process and providing revolutionary new discovery+research+study systems while maintaining compliance with copyright law.
History
In 2004, DLSG sold its first KIC, BSCAN ILL, and Opus systems. Ten years later, nearly 70% of students at US universities were served by DLSG digitization systems (90% by budget), and public libraries were beginning to investigate and learn the value of DLSG technologies. In 2015, DLSG began developing the Digital Library Ecosystem. After six years and over a quarter of a million R&D professional hours invested, the Digital Library Ecosystem is ready, with excellent provisions for serving the study and research challenges caused by social distancing.
The Digital Age Librarian
The role libraries and librarians play in helping their patrons find unbiased information is especially challenging in the digital age. The Web has become a powerful source of misinformation – the biggest advertising Web sites, both social and search, track each user with algorithms that maximize the time users spend viewing the advertising by identifying the content that aligns with the user’s pre-existing opinions, without regard for accuracy. Even without these algorithms, instant access to Web search results makes it all too easy for people to disregard more vetted sources of information. The $100+ that billion libraries have invested in scholarly content over decades and centuries is far more factual and independent of political or social affiliation than a majority of what is found on the Web, and unlike the Web, printed content is essentially immutable. While highly innovative new research technologies are of great value to PhD researchers, they can also empower students and the general public to find vetted and unbiased information, which can help to create an anti-misinformation movement, helping to reduce disagreements in our society to just those topics that are actually arguable.
Product Map
Most Scholarly Print Collections are Undervalued
The licenses for the content in printed books owned by libraries
are more valuable than digital licenses for the same content
Printed Book
Digital Rights
Print / Digital Lending
Current lending methods/practices
Unlimited Digitize-on-demand
of excerpts, using patron-operated self-serve kiosks
Controlled Digital Lending (CDL)
of digitized content, whole items or excerpts, for virtually any checkout time duration of digitized content, whole items or excerpts, for virtually any checkout and blackout time durations
ILL & Digital Document Delivery
with the same nominal restrictions that have long applied to print content (no additional restrictions imposed by the publisher’s DRM system)
Digital Access Not Outside The premises of the Library
of works that have been digitized that are unpublished or damaged, deteriorating, lost, stolen, or in an obsolete format using digital fence technology
Support for HotLinks & KSS
next generation research/discovery built into a research tool with fast navigation between hundreds of highly relevant hyperlinked items; and a portable advanced study system with ReadAlong Audio, computer-assisted skim, HotLinkable highlighting, custom flash cards, and graphical study progress
Supports Optimal Print-Digital Ratio
high use books can be concentrated in an area of the library with self-serve digitization kiosks; rarely accessed books can be moved off-site; KAT Stacks digital stacks browsing technology can make navigating and finding content easy
The Publishers’ Perspectives

Your publishers’ representatives are just doing their jobs when they extoll the merits of purchasing new digital licenses without any consideration for the value of your existing print collections. However, your publishers’ marketing departments have a different relationship with libraries.

While librarians rarely meet their publishers’ marketing teams, libraries have always helped them market new titles. One might think that Amazon promotes new titles effectively enough these days, but libraries continue to play an essential role in promoting new books. Libraries showcase new books that they lend for free to a large percentage of the population, and library patrons promote the books to friends and family members as well as fellow researchers and students, many of whom prefer the convenience of buying books.

This symbiotic relationship between publishers and libraries should not be forgotten, and HotLinks Research Tool provides a unique new win-win opportunity for libraries and publishers that work together. HotLinks Research Tool is a next generation discovery system for scholarly content that exposes students and researchers to a tremendous number of relevant copyrighted titles that are not found using current discovery systems. By supporting a BUY button on the HotLinks content excerpt screens, students and researchers are able to purchase the books, thus fulfilling a fair use requirement of copyright law (Section 107). This in turn compels publishers to support libraries’ controlled digital lending solutions for the huge investments in scholarly content in print form that they have made over the decades, and that in the digital age, libraries are compelled to loan digitally.

HotLinks Research Tool was developed with two goals in mind: 1) to greatly improve the discovery process; and 2) to significantly increase awareness of and demand for scholarly content worldwide.

Four Steps to Dramatically Increase
The Value of Your Scholarly Print Collections
  • 1. Digitize-On-Demand for Frequently Accessed Items

    A single print item can be copied (an excerpt at a time) an unlimited number of times, which, along with high quality and low prices explain why KIC digitization systems are on a thousand college campuses across the US and Canada. Promote digitize-on-demand to your study and research patrons by creating a centrally located section of the stacks with your frequently accessed books and materials, with multiple self-serve digitize-on-demand stations nearby. The concentration of highly used materials will also concentrate patrons and create a collective energy that will increase the apparent value of your print collections. Ideally, your reference and reserves materials should also be nearby.

  • 2. Optimized Controlled Digital Lending (CDL)

    Libraries need DRM specifically for lending the content in their print collections:

    • Copyright law for libraries has been updated for the digital age, but remains substantially underutilized
    • The digital rights management (DRM) systems used by publishers are NOT ideal for lending

    DLSG offers extended CDL that addresses each element of ©-Law Sections 107 and 108 and the ‘first use’ clause of ©-Law Section 109, and that works with the thousands of KIC, Opus & BSCAN ILL digitization systems that are in use across the US and Canada. These systems range in price from just a few thousand dollars for a small system with a face-down BookEdge scanner, to nearly forty thousand dollars for a very large system with the new Bookeye 5 scanner, the fastest high quality scanner available today, with Click Mini scanners occupying the mid-range.

  • 3. KAT Stacks – Instant 24/7 Virtual Reality Browsing & Search

    It doesn’t take much to convince most librarians that KAT Stacks is valuable. The big question is: “How expensive and difficult is it to get?” It is actually quite easy to setup a computer generated (CGI) version of KAT Stacks that matches your print collections – simply bulk load your collections into KAT Stacks by importing your MARC records. CGI versions of the spines and covers of your items are automatically created. Then walk through your library with a WiFi-connected tablet, identifying each aisle and the first book on each shelf. KAT Stacks can also be informed which books are in special sections such as reserves and your new digitize-on-demand section, and which books have been moved to storage. When users are viewing a single shelf in KAT Stacks, they can switch to a mode that includes the books in storage and in special sections of the library – digital shelves have no width limits.

    To stay current as your collection changes, and to show the checkout status of each item, KAT Stacks integrates with your ILS via SIP2.

    For a very realistic and immersive virtual reality experience for the most important sections of your stacks, use the KIC Covers & Spines option to digitize up to 100 spines and covers per hour.

  • 4. HotLinks Research Tool – Beyond Search

    While it is certainly useful, catalog search is woefully inadequate for research and study - the catalog contains too little information to be truly effective. Even full text search has limitations: 1) a full-text search system should be tightly connected with the holdings of your library and your library’s ILS; 2) while studying, your student patrons should be able to instantly and easily access content from your print collections that closely matches the textbook chapters they are currently studying; and 3) your researchers should be able to instantly and easily find the hundred or so closest matches in your entire print collections and perhaps beyond, to the dozens or hundreds of pages of text that they have created on a particular research topic.

    HotLinks Research Tool allows students and researchers to find valuable scholarly books that they would never otherwise encounter. When used as high-speed study & research input machines, KIC digitization systems allow students to capture full textbook chapters, and allow researchers to capture and combine large amounts of printed and digital text, in just a few minutes, then output the content to MyDocs(a free study/research app for phones, tablets & PCs), along with metadata that characterizes all pages of input for HotLinks Research Tool. While studying or researching, the user selects an anchor term (a search term), invokes HotLinks Research Tool, and is instantly able to swipe or scroll through the 100 or so best matches to the entire chapter or research text that also contains the anchor term.

    Together, DLSG’s Digitize-on-demand KIC systems, MyDocs with KIC Study System and optimized CDL, KAT Stacks and HotLinks Research Tool reinvent the library in the digital age. DLSG has a name for this entire integrated transformation: the Digital Stacks Ecosystem. Perhaps it’s time to reinvent and renew partnerships between publishers and libraries.

©-Law Section 108 Gives Libraries “Superpowers”

University of Illinois Library wrote: Section 108 of the Copyright Act provides librarians with what some may call "superpowers" to lend and distribute works that are otherwise copyright protected. See: The Copyright Act: § 108 - Copyright and Digitization of Library Materials - LibGuides at University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign.

Section 108 lets libraries distribute many PDF copies of a single original (no one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio!), copies that the patron can keep forever (no checkout time limits), this is strong evidence of the solid support copyright law provides to libraries, especially considering the fact that, unlike CDL, PDFs have no software restrictions against secondary distribution, which, via email, can be instant and extensive.

The Best Values for Harvesting: Self-Serve Digitization Kiosks and ILL/Digital Document Delivery
Self-serve copying and scanning, distribution of course materials, and ILL/Digital Document Delivery offer the best harvesting values, for these methods allow excerpts of a single item to be shared many times (no owned-to-loaned ratio) and the patron can keep the content forever – no checkout time limits.
Over the years, course materials have been distributed as paper copies or in electronic form (on writable CDs). Scanning for print or electronic distribution can be done using KIC Self-serve Digitization Kiosks or BSCAN ILL systems. Either way, the value of the copies is typically far greater than the cost.
Note that libraries have been maximizing their Library Superpowers for over 50 years with Concentrated Collections Areas such as reading rooms, special collections areas and reference sections. These areas were originally equipped with copiers, but most changed to KIC Self-serve digitization systems between 2005 and 2015. Learn more...
Copright Law May Soon Change
If the U.S. Copyright Office Has Its Way, Libraries May Soon Have More “Superpowers”

The U.S. Copyright Office recognizes the need to update Section 108: “...section 108 has failed to keep up with the rise of digital media and technologies that have fundamentally changed the way in which copyrighted works are made, distributed, preserved, and accessed. ... The "Section 108 Study Group" was tasked with engaging in independent discussion and producing an independent report and set of recommendations. See: U.S. Copyright Office - Revising Section 108: Copyright Exceptions for Libraries and Archives

DLSG’s answer for normal lending of monographs by academic libraries can increase publisher and author revenues, as dictated by copyright law (©-Law Section 107, 4th bullet: “the effect of the use upon the potential

market for or value of the copyrighted work.”) and more important, better serves the citizens, as dictated by the U.S. constitutional clause that allows copyright law to exist (“To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”)

FOUR SUGGESTED REVISIONS TO COPYRIGHT LAW
that DLSG is offering the Section 108 Study Group
DLSG suggests the following Digital Millennium Copyright Act revisions in support of substantial benefits to citizens while maintaining fairness to copyrights holders. Note that suggested wording is shown in gold.
  1. ©-Law 108 (g) update: The rights of reproduction and distribution under this section include automated distribution of digital content, provided the method of delivery prohibits sharing, but otherwise extend only to isolated and unrelated reproduction….
  2. A new ©-Law 108 section (e.g., after section e): Any digital discovery system (e.g. full text search) that facilitates the discovery of relevant and high-quality content can temporarily display random samples of potentially relevant digital pages instantly and automatically to allow the reader to judge the quality and relevance of the discovered content, provided the system includes controls against the retention of permanent copies of more than a small excerpt of any particular discovered content item.
  3. Exceptions for Library Patrons With Disabilities, a long overdue update to Section 108 – specifically, self-serve copying of excerpts: … the digital form of content can be made easily accessible to patrons with disabilities, with no requirements for such patrons to perform manual discovery and/or digitization operations, and sufficient numbers of digital copies can be retained for this purpose to ensure no loss of data.
  4. Section 107 and 108 revisions: Full-text and images of graphics of any and all copyrighted content can be retained by libraries for digital discovery for all patrons, including multiple copies as needed to avoid loss of data in the event of storage device or media failure.
REASONING FOR THE ABOVE REVISIONS TO US COPYRIGHT LAW
Reasoning for #1 above: The reason libraries are required to re-digitize the same content each time it is requested is to support distribution of free copies while providing ‘economic resistance’ that discourages unbridled copying. The current law, which has been in effect since 1976, does not, however, prevent those receiving copies from redistributing the content. If the library is willing to add this control, a control that is not currently required by copyright law, then it is only fair that the library and its patrons receive something in return. DLSG proposes that, in return for prohibiting redistribution, libraries should not have to do the ‘busy work’ of rescanning content each time it is requested.
Reasoning for #2 above: Judge Chin ruled in the 2015 Authors Guild vs Google lawsuit that full-text search is too valuable for it to be denied to the public and it does not in itself negatively impact copyrights holders. In fact, full-text search may be the only way to support the declining monograph publishing industry. If, however, the content of interest is displayed without restrictions, then the user might have no reason to purchase the associated item. But what is the value of a discovery system if it cannot show its findings, especially if the findings are the result of one or a few search terms? This seemingly unresolvable problem has a simple solution. Showing several randomly selected pages promotes the purchase of the item in two ways: 1) the reader gets an idea of the quality and relevance of the content; and 2) the user’s interest in the content is highly unlikely to be satisfied by viewing several random pages. Sampling actual content is necessary to allow the selection of the most relevant and highest quality excerpts of content that are found using modern discovery systems.
Reasoning for #3 above: Prior to the digital age, the only way a library could accommodate special needs patrons who wish to benefit from a library’s self-serve copying equipment was for library staff to perform the copying. This support, however, did not assist the special needs patrons with discovering content of interest. Modern digital technology makes both of these possible. However, copyright law does not explicitly support the use of technology to serve special needs patrons. DLSG’s suggested copyright law revision many possible technological solutions to serve special needs library patrons.
Reasoning for #4 above: While Judge Chin’s 2015 ruling states this, it is important for libraries to feel 100% confident that that they are not at risk of a lawsuit brought by copyrights holders, even if libraries are likely to prevail.
Note that with or without any of these updates to ©-Law section 108, libraries and archives can negotiate with publishers to lend digitized content using the Aggregate CDL model proposed by DLSG (see DLSG’s Aggregate CDL).
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Even without the Much Needed Updates to ©-Law Section 108, CDL is Compelling
CDL & Copyright Law

Only DLSG’s CDL+ is highly transformative and can protect copyrights holders. See Judge Chin’s ruling on Google vs Authors Guild and ©-Law Section 107, bullet four: “the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.” Also, when an item is accessed digitally, physical removal from the shelf is the only way to ensure that the item is never accessed simultaneously by a patron in the library. Efficient removal and reshelving of many items per day without mistakes requires a workflow, and DLSG’s CDL+ has an excellent workflow for this.

Rejuvenating Monograph Publishing

Monograph publishing is declining, despite its great value for students and researchers. DLSG’s Aggregate CDL solution is perhaps the only answer to the dire problem of declining publishing rates for scholarly monographs. DLSG’s CDL+ also includes a request-fulfill workflow for monograph excerpts that can be found using Google Scholar’s full-text search facility, and soon, DLSG’s revolutionary HotLinks Research Tool.

Support for Social Distancing

Only CDL, both basic and DLSG’s CDL+ fully support social distancing, while traditional harvest methods do not, except for digital ILL & Digital Document Delivery (DDD), and to some degree, self-serve scanning.

Only In Library

Only DLSG’s CDL+ can limit access via patron PCs, tablets and phones to inside the library, as specified in ©-Law Section 108 for digital versions of traditional faculty requested print reserves, unpublished materials and out-of-print materials, in compliance with ©-Law Sub-sections 108b and 108c.

Most Affordable

DLSG’s CDL+ solution can be serving up content in a day, and it costs only $4,999 per year, includes a fast and reliable cloud hosted server. Also, a substantial discount applies if purchased in 2022.

CDL Animation |Serve More Students per Book with a Controlled Digital Lending Solution from DLSG

Use DLSG’s Directed Lending Solution to Maximize use of digital copies of your print collections in accordance with copyright law

This system emulates standard physical reserves systems in academic libraries, but with added support for distance learning (e.g. during COVID) – each student can access the same book a few minutes to several hours at a time, and when finished, the next student can access the book.

Part 1 – setting up a directed lending profile

Once a digital copy of the content is posted to a DSE Content Server, a library staff member can setup a directed lending profile by finding the item and entering the professor and class, the number of copies being set aside for this, the start and end date during which the content can be accessed, and the checkout and blackout durations.

Part 2 – One-to-one (1:1) Owned to Loaned Ratio

The first and second students checkout the two available copies of the content. Due to automatic enforcement of a one-to-one (1:1) owned to loaned ratio, attempts by the remaining students to checkout the content fail, whereupon they each request email notification when the content is again available for checkout.

Part 3 –Checkouts Times End, Blackout Times Begin and Automatic Emails are Sent

When the checkout time ends for students one and two, their blackout times begin and all other students are informed by email that the content is available for checkout.

Part 4 – Blackout times Allow Other Students Access

Because of blackout times, the third and fourth students are able to checkout the copies, but the fifth student is still unable to checkout the content

Part 5 – The Fifth Student Gets Access

In as little as four hours, the first four students can each have two hours of study time and the fifth student is able to checkout the book for two hours as well, while the first four students wait for their blackout times to end. Next two student’s checkout time ends and their blackout times begin; the last student is informed by email that the content is available, and he checks out the content

Part 6 – The First Student again has access

24 hours after the first student lost access to the content, he/she can again access the content for two hours.

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DSE Content Server
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Unlike Other CDL Systems, DLSG’s Directed Lending is HIGHLY TRANSFORMATIVE

The greatest benefit of digitizing content from your highly valuable print collection is not that it facilitates distance learning during COVID, but rather the powerful study and research enhancing tools that require content to be digital. The four powerful study enhancing features of DLSG's Directed Lending Solution shown here allow students to recover lost time and study instantly anywhere, enhance retention, instantly access alternate treatments of their study material, and instantly access content through the most powerful new research tool in existence.

Introduction
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Your
Checkout Time
Has Expired
Read on a phone without eyestrain
Set and change the speed to match your need
In today’s challenging academic environments, students must be able to study anywhere, any time. Our SKIM feature provides easy reading anywhere with your phone, even for visually impaired.
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Your
Checkout Time
Has Expired
ReadAlong Audio for Better Retention
Students Increase focus and reinforce retention with ReadAlong Audio, effective on phone, tablet and PC, and move effortlessly between their devices without losing their place and with full Study Progress Monitoring a touch away.
bookshelves
Comparison Chart
Traditional Distribution and Lending vs Basic CDL vs DLSG's Transformative CDL+
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Harvest Method and Format

Copyright
Law

Supports Social
Distancing

Controls against
redistribution

Checkout
Duration

Owned-to-
loaned ratio

Only in
Library

Normal
Lending

Traditional Printed Materials

Basic CDL

DLSG's CDL+

Precedent

Interpretation

©-Law+case

NO

YES

Whatever
the library
specifies

One-to-One

N/A

Reserves &
Unpublished,
Out-of-Print

Traditional Printed Materials

Basic CDL

DLSG's CDL+

Precedent

NO

108b,c

NO

YES

Whatever
the library
specifies

One-to-One

YES

YES

NO

Course
Materials

Traditional Printed & CDs

Basic CDL

DLSG's CDL+

Precedent
(& 108d,e)

YES

NO

YES

Forever

Unlimited
copies
allowed

N/A

Digital Doc.
Delivery

Traditional PDF or Fax

Basic CDL

DLSG's CDL+

108d,e

YES

NO

YES

Forever

Unlimited
copies
allowed

N/A

Self-server
copy / scan

Traditional copying & scanning

Basic CDL

DLSG's CDL+

108f

NO

YES

Forever

N/A

Unlimited...

N/A

N/A

In Addition, …

DLSG’s CDL+ is the only highly transformative CDL system available today, and therefore the only CDL system that complies with the copyright case law represented by Judge Chin’s ruling in the Google vs Authors Guild case.

DLSG’s Aggregate Lending Solution is the only CDL system available today that can protect copyrights holder revenues, as required by ©-Law Section 107, and even promote an increase in authoring of high value scholarly monographs, which supports the fundamental intent of copyright law, as stated in the US Constitution.

DLSG’s Course Materials Request System provides a scanning workflow similar to those used for fulfilling ILL requrest, as well as an organized and efficient method of storing items while accessible via CDL, then reshelving the items when no longer accessible via CDL, in support of a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio.

DLSG’s CDL ILL Request System for Monographs can use any of the thousands of KIC systems in academic libraries today to digitize a whole book in 15 minutes and fill a request for a small portion of the book (in compliance with ©-Law Section 108d,e). Note that patrons can use Google Scholar’s full-text search system as a discovery system for finding relevant content within monographs. In the near future, DLSG will offer a revolutionary new discovery method that is far more effective than full-text searches for one or a few key terms (i.e. Google Scholar). This revolutionary new discovery method will allow students and researchers to input whole textbook chapters or dozens of pages of research for matchup with the full text of millions of monographs in seconds.

Aggregate CDL

The U.S. Patent Office’s Section 108 Study Group has been working for 20 years and has not come to an agreement. Perhaps it’s time for a new approach. DLSG’s answer, Aggregate CDL serves copyrights holders and libraries, but most of all, citizens at large.

The U.S. Constitution allows copyright law to exist for the sole purpose of promoting the authoring and publishing of works that benefit society. And while many scholarly monographs are created to fill the “publish or perish” directive, scholarly monographs are important and sometimes essential facilitators of the development of new science and technology, and to improve the human condition. However, over the past 20 years, monograph publishing rates have declined significantly.

DLSG’s Aggregate CDL is designed to expose researchers and students to vastly more relevant content from scholarly monographs while in the library. And when not in the library, the user is given the opportunity to rent or buy the content, presumably using department or personal funds This provides the revenue impetus authors and publishers need to write and publish more monographs, without using library funds. And once Aggregate CDL is setup, the ‘in the library’ requirement can be relaxed from the first day of the next pandemic, and ended when the institution deems appropriate.

DLSG’s Aggregate CDL system includes HotLinks Research Tool, which allows the user to input entire research papers for the system to characterize and perform DLSG’s exclusive search and match function and provide instant access to 100 of the most relevant items from your library, and highlight important content. When the user leaves the library, the content is not accessible, but the highlights are retained, up to 10% of the content of each volume reviewed. The user can access the content while not in the library, if desired, by simply renting or buying the desired content. Upon returning to the library, the content is again visible, with the highlights. The highlights can also be output in an editable format with source citations

In summary, DLSG’s Aggregate CDL:

  • Provides a revolutionary new method of discovery and analysis designed specifically for researchers and students, a method that instantly exposes them to large numbers of relevant print collections items
  • Provides full access to all content of all copyrighted items in the library’s print collections, while in the library
  • Strongly promotes the library as an extremely effective research center
  • Promotes the purchase or rental of copyrighted content when not in the library for those who can afford it, and as a consequence, promotes the authoring and publishing of more scholarly monographs, not just for credentialing the author, but to advance science, technology and the human condition.
Basic CDL versus Aggregate CDL Diagram 1
Basic CDL

1-to-1 Lending – students must wait

Aggregate CDL

1-to-Many Lending – no waiting

book shelves diagram

Basic CDL has a simple one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio requirement. If the library owns only one printed copy of book A and one printed copy of book B, it can simultaneously lend only one digital copy of book A and one digital copy of book B. Basic CDL does not allow a library to lend multiple digital copies when it owns only one printed copy of a book.

Aggregate CDL also has an owned-to-loaned ratio requirement, but that requirements is based on dollars spent and lent. If in a given year, a library buys only one printed copy of book A and one printed copy of book B from a particular publisher, but also buys a sufficient number of esoteric scholarly monographs from the same publisher, the library can lend more copies of books A and B than it owns, provided the total dollars spent is less than or equal to the total dollar value lent.

Basic CDL versus Aggregate CDL Diagram 2
Basic CDL

With Basic CDL, to avoid waiting, the library must buy multiple copies of common books

Aggregate CDL

With Aggregate CDL, spending and publisher revenue are the same, but the library gets a bonus: esoteric scholarly monographs

book shelves diagram

The Aggregate CDL Bonus: more esoteric scholarly monographs at no additional cost.

With basic CDL, if a library wishes to allow several students to checkout the same book simultaneously, the library must purchase multiple additional copies of that same book. This is wasteful and it does not promote the publishing of esoteric scholarly monographs.

With aggregate CDL, the library can spend the same dollar amount with a particular publisher, but buy only one copy of each popular book that it needs, and spend the balance of the money on esoteric scholarly volumes, represented above by books C, D and E in the diagram above. The rule for this example, in summary is:

3 x Acost + 2 x Bcost < Acost + Bcost + Ccost + Dcost + Ecost
MyDocs Library App
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MyDocs Library App allows users to harvest, capture & organize all library and textbook content for study and research on phone/tablet/PC.
Access ILL/DDD content, any digital output from KIC scan stations, and any imported digital material. In addition, course materials, and reserves can be made accessible for online checkout anytime with CDL+ (controlled digital lending)
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Also Included in the MyDocs App:
Features Advantages
ReadAlong Audio (3 Study Methods) Reading while listening is well known to significantly improve retention. In addition, users can also use just the audio or read normally without audio.
Highlighting with FlashCards (3 Study Methods) Students are able to highlight their own private digital copy without defacing a textbook that they don't own, and instead of simply highlighting important text, KSS makes flashcards that can be used for easy review, and quiz themselves on the highlighted points. Note that frequent quizzes are well know to improve retention.
SKIM (2 Study Methods) This feature can be used in two modes: 1) at high speed (e.g. 400-600 words per minute), for pre-reading a paragraph or two just prior to ReadAlong Audio, for reviewing just before a test, or for looking for some particular information that the student hasn't been able to find by searching; and 2) at normal reading speed (e.g. at 120-400 words per minute) for more comfortable reading on the small screen of a smart phone.
Study Progress Monitoring This features shows how much of the study material has been covered once, twice or more using ReadAlong Audio, Skim and the study mode of Flashcards. In addition, it shows the results of the one and multiple flashcard quizzes.
Study Dashboard This feature shows study progress summary information for each course that is in progress, allowing students to better allocate their study time between courses.
Small Smart Phone Support KSS intelligently reflows text, pictures , diagrams, etc. for surprisingly effective studying experience on small smart phones. MyDocs Personal Network can automatically transfer study materials between Phone, Tablet and PC.
Personal Network Once in their phone, KSS packets can be automatically transferred to the students' tablet and PC for seamless switching between devices for optimal study effectiveness.
Instant Access to Research HotLinks Research Tool – Once a researcher inputs dozens of pages of personal research as well as journal articles, etc., into a KIC digitization system at the library and outputs KSS packets to MyDocs, he/she is a few touches and screen swipes away from instant access to up to 100 pages of the most relevant content in the HotLinks and DSE Content Server systems.
Instant Access to Alternate Study Materials HotLinks Study Tool – Students that use KIC digitization systems at the library to digitize a textbook chapter and output a KSS packet to MyDocs can touch and swipe to the most relevant alternate study materials from a million pages of Open Educational Resources, or from all monographs in the HotLinks and DSE Content Server systems.
flying-book

HotLinks Research Tool

Give Your Researchers Instant Access to Billions of pages of Relevant Content

For Scholars and Researchers, HotLinks Research Tool provides a revolutionary search-match system that takes up to 100 pages of personal research as input and instantly matches it with billions of pages of scholarly content in the print collections of your library and the libraries of other Digital Stacks Project members. HotLinks instantly finds 100 matches representing the most relevant content from billions of pages. Researchers are able to find valuable content that they would never find with standard search systems.

HotLinks Research Tool results can be viewed as ‘sample’ pages from the entire volume that promote copyrighted content that might otherwise remain unknown.

For better compliance with the Fair Use section of copyright law, the library can enable the ability for researchers to purchase the full content.

bookshelf-1 bookshelf-2 bookshelf-3 bookshelf-4 bookshelf-5 bookshelf-6 bookshelf-5 bookshelf-5 bookshelf-5
flying-book
HotLinks Study Tool
Instant Access to Your Print Collections
Library print collections are substantially more valuable than their digital equivalent and you already own them. The extensive digital rights management features of DLSG's controlled digital lending solution allow digitized content from printed books to be shared more effectively than purely digital content, provided you retain the print copy. For example, your popular printed books can be left on the shelf near high speed digitize-on-demand kiosks and for easy copying of virtually unlimited numbers of excerpts.
In addition, HotLinks Research Tool's search-match algorithms instantly and easily find precious 'needle in the haystacks' research content from vast print collections - content that would not be found by searching digital card catalogs or full text searches of all content. HotLinks Research Tool runs on key terms and other content characterizing information that does not require purchase of digital licenses.
Give Your Students Instant Access to 1,000 Open Educational Resource Titles
The most valuable of its transformative features for students is HotLinks Study Tool, which can take an entire textbook chapter as input and instantly provides access to the full text of the most relevant Open Educational Resources (OER) from 1,000 high quality titles, over half a million pages.
Instantly Access Alternate Treatments
At any time while studying, swipe the screen for instant access to alternate treatments of the material currently being studied - the most relevant match from a million pages of Open Educational Resources. As such, HotLinks Study Tool can be a 24/7 on-demand replacement for collaboration with other students.

KIC Study System - Part of MyDocs with Controlled Digital Lending (DRM)

KIC Study System dramatically improves study efficiency and effectiveness

MyDocs is a free download from Microsoft, Apple and Android stores KSS is a part of MyDocs that provides free access to Open Educational Resources (OER) and scanned content from KIC systems, with the following features:
  • ReadAlong Audio
  • Computer-assisted skim/review
  • Custom flashcards
  • Highlighting (HotLinked Highlights coming soon)
  • Study progress monitoring
  • Instant search-match and access to scholarly content via HotLinks Research & Study Tools
  • Repeat Audio for memorization as well as better retention and to assist with understanding
  • And more
background

HotLinks Research Tool

Scan or import research material as input to HotLinks. Your source material can be any length - just a few pages or 100 pages. Hotlinks is far better than keyword search. It characterizes the source material as whole, compares them with a billion pages of scholarly content, and returns the 100 best matches in seconds.

HotLinks offsets untold hours of administrative load and allows researchers to see the closest matches to their source material with simple repeated swipes across their touch screens, revealing consecutive search-matches.

HotLinks Study Tool

Students scan textbook chapters and course materials, send to MyDocs app on their tablet, phone or PC, and study with KSS.

At any time while studying their materials, they can activate HotLinks and swipe their screen and get instant access to high quality OER content that matches their current study topic, exposing them to alternate treatments of whatever they are studying. This can be an effective alternative to collaborative study during COVID.

Scan and send to MyDocs

KIC Study System

HotLinks Study Tool

Use any KIC station to scan course material, textbook chapters, and other study material quickly and efficiently.

Open resulting PDF in KIC Study System to skim, hear the material read around, and make, study and test flashcards.

Swipe to see other sources in OER libraries to read addition treatments and expand your understanding of the study material.

KSS for High School Students

Distance learning has disrupted study time as much as it has disrupted teaching. KIC Study System's graphical study progress tracking can be a great study coach. It also provides a powerful alternative to collaborative study - instant access to alternate treatments of a topic.

When a student is having trouble understanding some material, a mouse-click or touch screen swipe provides instant access to high-quality OER content on the same topic.

"I've skimmed and read my history twice. Time for biology."

"This SKIM is great for studying when I'm stuck somewhere with just my phone."

Open Educational Resources (OER) for High
School and Lower Division College Students

Use KSS instantly and free with the following OER

"My professor just told us about KSS and how to get the OER textbook he assigned. KSS is a great way to study."

  • LibreTexts
  • An Introduction to Nutrition
  • Bio2 Introduction to Human Biology
  • Biochemistry Free and Easy
  • Biochemistry Free for All
  • Biochemistry Online
  • Biodiversity
  • Biofundamentals
  • Biol3300 Genetics
  • Biology
  • Book Laboratory Exercises in Microbiology
  • Cascade Microbiology
  • Cells Molecules and Mechanisms
  • Entomology Lab Manual
  • Environmental Science
  • Environmental Biology
  • Evolutionary Developmental Biology
  • Forest Measurements and Applied Approach
  • General Biology
  • General Microbiology Lab Manual
  • Introduction to Botany
  • Introduction to Environmental Science
  • Introduction to Genetics
  • Introduction to Microbiology
  • L C C Introduction to Botany Hawaii Based
  • Microbiology
  • MKBN211 Introductory Microbiology
  • Phylogenetic Comparative Methods
  • Quantitative Ecology A New Unified Approach
  • Information Systems for Business and Beyond
  • International Finance Theory and Policy
  • Introduction to Business
  • Macroeconomics
  • Principles of Macroeconomics
  • African American History
  • U S History
  • World History Cultures States and Societies to 1500
  • Psychology
  • Introductory Psychology
  • Sociology
  • International Relations Theory
  • Minority Studies
  • International Relations
  • Together The Science Of Social Psychology
  • Mind Body World Foundations Of Cognitive Science
  • A Short Introduction To World Politics
  • Principles Of Microeconomics
  • Biological Anthropology
  • A Primer On Politics
  • Introduction To Human Geography
  • World Regional Geography
  • Social Problems Continuity And Change
  • Language and Culture in Context
  • Discover Psychology a Brief Introductory Text
  • OpenStax
  • Algebra Trigonometry
  • American Government
  • Anatomy Physiology
  • A P Biology
  • A P College Physics
  • A P Macroeconomics
  • A P Microeconomics
  • Astronomy
  • Biology
  • Business Ethics
  • Business Law1
  • Calculus Volume1
  • Calculus Volume2
  • Calculus Volume3
  • Chemistry
  • Chemistry Atoms First
  • College Algebra
  • College Physics
  • College Success
  • Concepts Of Biology
  • Economics
  • Elementary Algebra
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Financial Accounting Volume1
  • Intermediate Algebra
  • Introduction To Business
  • Introductory Business Statistics
  • Introductory Statistics
  • Macroeconomics
  • Managerial Accounting Volume2
  • Microbiology
  • Microeconomics
  • Organizational Behavior
  • Physics Volume1
  • Physics Volume2
  • Physics Volume3
  • Pre- Algebra
  • Pre- Calculus
  • Principles Of Management
  • Psychology
  • Psychology-2e
  • Sociology
  • Statistics High school
  • U S History
  • Bay College
  • English 101
  • English 102
  • History 211
  • History 212
  • FYE103 Career Exploration
  • StanfordUniversityPress
  • American Yawp Volume 1
  • American Yawp Volume 2

KIC Study System (KSS)

Dramatically improve long-term retention and overall study effectiveness using nine study methods derived from powerful digital-age study technologies such as ReadAlong Audio, SKIM, custom Flashcards, and HotLinks Study Tools

Manage study effectively using detailed graphical study progress statistics. Study anywhere, any time. KSS is highly effective on smartphones and needs only intermittent internet access.

No Internet? No problem.

MyDocs only uses the internet occasionally, to get new study material and synchronize between your devices. Note that MyDocs checks for digital rights compliance when internet connection is re-established

KSS is even effective on the small screens of smartphones.

KIC Self-serve Digitization Kiosks

for Students, Researchers, even for Controlled Digital Lending / DRM

A single KIC allows thousands of students and researchers to make unlimited copies of articles and book excerpts from your print collections, and keep them forever, with no lending time limits and no owned-to-loaned requirements. This and its high quality and low prices explain why KIC digitization systems are on a thousand college campuses across the US and Canada.

In addition to supporting new high-speed whole book digitization options that allow thousands of existing KIC systems in academic and research libraries to easily digitize content at high speeds, KIC systems provide powerful digital age services such as the ability to reorganize study and research materials, easily capture and add citations and produce custom study systems (KSS).

Promote digitize-on-demand to your study and research patrons by creating a centrally located section of the stacks with your frequently accessed books and materials, with multiple self-serve digitize-on-demand stations nearby. The concentration of highly used materials will also concentrate patrons and create a collective energy that will increase the apparent value of your print collections. For even greater value, place your reference and reserves materials nearby.

How Many KICs is Enough?

Overwhelming trend data exists on the number of KICs in use per thousand students. However the proportions of KICs could rise dramatically as libraries implement modern

HotLinks discovery-enabled concentrated collections areas. Prior to the advent of modern concentrated collections areas, the following KIC-to-student ratios are common:
  • Top ten universities have up to 2 KICs per thousand students, mostly high-end KIC Bookeye systems
  • Top 100 universities have up to 1 KIC per thousand students, with more high-end KIC Bookeye systems than not
  • Lower ranked universities often have a KIC per two thousand students, with one or few high-end KICs and the rest, broad mix of KIC models
  • Two year colleges have up to one KIC for every three thousand students, with one or few high-end KICs and the rest, broad mix of KIC models
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Offer your students and faculty KIC and its powerful, digital age features that from a superhighway between your highly valuable print collections and the digital world. Composer by KIC is one of many powerful features that are free with any KIC station under active maintenance.

Select Clips

Compose Page

Once pages are scanned, KIC automatically selects photos, charts, and paragraphs. Users can simply touch and drag to select an area, or just touch a photo, chart or paragraph and drag it to the digital clipboard.

Move clips individually from the clipboard to existing pages, or start a new blank page. Then design your layout by arranging, rescaling, rotating clips, and/or adding annotations, frames and clipart.

Save & Send

Shrink, enlarge, and rotate clips to create any layout. Undo changes, remove clips, until your creation is complete. It's digital desktop publishing, easy as 1-2-3, at your fingertips!

Use KIC's huge touch screen to easily arrange, rescale rotate clips, and/or annotations, frames, and clipart.

Then save your results in a variety of file formats and send to USB, email, smart device, or cloud.

Scan ISBN on Back of Book
and Select Citation Format

APA
MLA
Chicago
IEEE
AMA

Include Digital Citation on all clips

Touch & Drag Citation to Page

Create Complete
Citation List

Auto-create

POD for gifts, family history...

Bring new patrons to your library with Print On Demand Made Easy

Make a Family Recipe Book

Create a Book of Your Children's Art & Schoolwork

School Children Can Create Their Own Books Too!

What Kind of Book Do You Want to Make Today?

POD for Scholarly Publishing
& Course Materials, Digital Or Print

POD is Print on Demand, and it's never been easier

Print Bound Copies of Your Thesis

KIC's POD (Print on Demand) feature is a self-serve alternative to the usual thesis printing/binding vendors, using existing KIC systems offered by the university library.

"I can't believe how easy it was to order beautifully printed and bound copies of my thesis right from the KIC systems in our library"

Create Course Materials with Excerpts from Many Sources

With Kic in your library, instructors are no longer restricted to a single
text book. They can freely assign many excerpts from many books
without adding to the students already high cost of text books.

" I selected excerpts from twelve books and
created the text book i use for my Civil War class."

KIC Self-Service Scan, Copy, Fax

so much more than copier replacement

KAT Stacks Virtual Stacks Browser
With their subject-ordered call letters, academic libraries are designed for browsing – but in the digital age, browsing for research or study is becoming a ‘lost art.’
kat logo
stacks

It is the digital age and your students, faculty and researchers should be able to browse and search your print collections visually wherever they are, 24/7, using their phone, tablet or PC. Virtual reality technology is replacing traditional text-based systems everywhere and it’s time for libraries to join in.

KAT Stacks provides a virtuality reality browsing experience that matches the layout of your library’s print collections, aisle by aisle, shelf by shelf. It includes:

  • SIP2 integration with your ILS
  • Bulk import of MARC records and instant virtual stacks using on-line images of spines and covers, and computer generated graphical images
  • Digital Item checkout via DLSG’s controlled digital lending solution
  • Expanded shelf view that includes all books, including those in off-site storage, in reserves and in a high use section for digitizing excerpts
  • Integrated bibliographic search
  • Professors suggested reading lists
  • And more...

Virtual Stacks
exactly matches
physical stacks layout

No Internet? No problem.

MyDocs only uses the internet occasionally, to get
new study material and synchronize between your devices.
Note that MyDocs checks for digital rights compliance
when internet connection is re-established

Note: checkout status of print copies is retrieved from your library's ILS via SIP2

Digital Age Browsing 24/7 access to a visually accurate representation of your stacks, a virtual world where checked out items are always visible, but are marked as checked out, and shelves can be digitally expanded to include all items that are in storage.
Physical Browsing Assistant While browsing the physical stacks, before de-shelving a book, the patron can use their phone or tablet to instantly access bibliographic information, without performing a cumbersome search, simply by touching the spine of the book, thus reducing the chance of returning the book to the wrong place in the shelf.
Digital Reserves Desk Using KAT Stacks anywhere and 24/7, patrons can browse reserves items virtually, but can access the full text only while in the library, using DLSG’s Digital Fence Technology. Unpublished and out-of-print materials can be browsed accessed this way as well, in compliance with ©-Law Section 108, subsections b and c.
Re-task Reserves Desk Staff Serve reserves digitally and automatically, and use the staff time to fulfill student requests for digital course materials, and researcher requests for content they find using HotLinks Research Tool and KAT Stacks.
Distribute Course Materials 24/7 Students can enter a key code, browse a professor’s recommended reading list and perform an ILL-style request for excerpts (<10%), content that is fulfilled in blocks. In 15 minutes, scan the whole book with bookmarks, and make available a limited number of copies for instant download by students that have the key to the professor’s reading list.
An Important Caveat
KAT Stacks currently can only show CGI representations of books in your collections for which the covers are accessible, and these representations are often inaccurate. Accurate representations of book spines is important for several reasons. People who are browsing the physical print collections must be able to easily identify the virtual versions of physical book spines that they might be interested in and simply touch the virtual spine to instantly get the bibliographic record. Also, it can facilitate a positive emotional connection with the print collections.
To greatly improve KAT Stacks realism, DLSG will soon select a university library partner to capture digital images of spines of all of the items in its print collections and match them to the bibliographic records using powerful imaging technologies that were developed to serve customers of DLSG’s parent company, Image Access, Inc.
The Digital Stacks Ecosystem
The Digital Stacks Ecosystem (DSE) represents a new digital age model for maximizing the value of scholarly content locked in academic and public library print collections, and maintaining preparedness for the next pandemic. DSE technologies such as BSCAN ILL, KIC self-serve digitization kiosks, Opus digitization systems, enable libraries to use the special “super powers” that copyright law grants them so that students can scan excerpts and request interlibrary loans freely, without concern for copyright infringement and enjoy features like searchable text, audio playback, linked highlights, auto-citations, flash cards, and many other indispensable advantages offered by digital technology.
Some of the Many Problems that DLSG’s Digital Stacks Ecosystem Solves
Problem: Libraries need a distance learning replacement for electronic reserves – to provide faculty specified content to students. problem 1 image
The DSE Solution: Directed Lending AutoLinks – CDL links to content for a particular course that can be placed in the university’s learning management system for access only by students enrolled in that course. The access settings for these CDL AutoLinks can be set with a one-to-one restriction and a lending time limit, or to match electronic reserves, which do not have either of these limits.
Problem: Many academic library patrons prefer to use their own PCs, tablets and/or phones for accessing content digitally when in their library, and copyright law allows unpublished and out-of-print items to be accessed digitally while in the library. problem 2 image
The DSE Solution: DLSg’s MyDocs library app includes digital fence technology that allows content to be viewed only while in the library.
Problem: Researchers and students often wish to copy and retain only a few words or sentences from a number of different items, and while this kind of copying is far below the small excerpts limit specified by ©-Law section 108, there has been no digital age method for this type of very small excerpt harvesting. problem 3 image
The DSE Solution: The HotLinked Highlights feature built into MyDocs allows content that is accessed using MyDocs while in the library to be highlighted, and MyDocs retains all highlighted text up to an amount that is less that 10% of the entire volume, or another percentage that can be specified by the library.
Problem: ©-Law 107 + Judge Chin requires that, in order for digital access to copyrighted content to be legal, the access method(s) must be transformative, and the specific method of access that Judge Chin considered to be transformative includes full-text search. problem 4 image
The DSE Solution: Extraordinarily transformative CDL, including search, highlighting with navigation and automatic citating, HotLinks, ReadAlong Audio, computer-assisted speed-reading, very large text display at a user-selectable pace, custom flashcards
Problem: ©-Law Section 107 requires that copyright holders not be negatively impacted. In particular, they should not suffer significant revenue loss. problem 5 image
The DSE Solution: Aggregate CDL promotes far greater exposure of copyrighted content in the library’s print collections while in the library, and when the user leaves the library, the user cannot access the content, but has the option to rent or buy the content. Note that financially disadvantaged patrons can have all access they wish, provided they are inside the library.
Problem: The U.S. Copyright Office’s Section 108 Study Group has taken 20 years and is still unable to agree upon any amendments to the ©-Law Section 108 to improve patron use of library collections in the digital age. problem 6 image
Problem: The U.S. Copyright Office’s Section 108 Study Group has taken 20 years and is still unable to agree upon any amendments to the ©-Law Section 108 to improve patron use of library collections in the digital age.
Problem: Some libraries that have sought legal counsel on the legality of basic CDL have received disappointing answers such as “not recommended.” problem 7 image
The DSE Solution: Provide to legal counsel the exact settings for lending and distribution that will be used for distributing course materials, for ILL and digital document delivery of individual articles and excerpts of books, for unpublished works, and for out-of-print works. To our knowledge, these libraries have not provided their legal counsel with any details on how their CDL would work. With no such details, it seems not unreasonable for legal counsel to advise against CDL, probably because basic CDL is not transformative, and it can negatively impact revenue (especially with textbooks), a requirement of ©-Law Section 107. When Judge Chin ruled that Google Scholar was acting legally, it was for two reasons, both driven by the intent of the clause in the US Constitution that allows US Congress to enact copyright law: 1) Judge Chin deemed Google Scholar’s full-text search capability to be transformative; and 2) he concluded that Google Scholar would not negatively impact copyrights holders.
Problem: Over the past two decades, scholarly monograph publishing has been very negatively affected by the reduced value of printed books in the digital age and the highly controlled (via DRM) electronic books. To realize the intent of the US Constitution clause that allows copyright law to exist, something must be done to improve the value of scholarly monographs to their markets, which are primarily academic and research libraries.
The DSE Solution: Aggregate CDL - highly transformative CDL for scholarly monographs, with reasonable controls and revenue opportunities for their authors and publishers.
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#1 successful research is worth more than all the money in the world.
Research in the physical sciences has made possible computers, phones, the internet, sky scrapers, jets, space travel, feeding billions more people, clean water, virtually all medical science and technology and so much more. Research in politics, economics, sociology and other fields has made possible the government and economic systems that support research and ensure egalitarian access to the research.
#2 monographs serve a vital purpose that is poorly served by journal articles.
A monograph is like a whole life story, while journal articles are more like a day in the life. Journal articles represent the 'raw research,' the myriad small data points. Monographs generally congeal new knowledge from multiple journal articles with commonly accepted knowledge into a more complete representation. The goal of journal articles is to publish research findings soon after they occur, usually in a rush. It is because journal articles cover the breaking news of the sciences and useful arts, monograph authors are able to take more time and focus on maximizing understanding.
#3 It has been proven a thousand times over that most of the greatest researchers in history are anomalies - they come from anywhere and everywhere.
It can take millions of people to yield one great scientist that will change the world. It is entirely unpredictable who might be the next great scientists, and civilization is always making problems that need solving by the world's greatest minds. So we need to make millions of scientists and give them the best education possible along with egalitarian access to all the scholarly knowledge possible and the best research tools to find and harvest the information they need, and that means a vigorously active monograph publishing industry, and an even more vigorous scholarly publishing industry.
eSeminar: ©-Law Section 108, Library Superpowers and Related Technologies
The Legal Benefits of Printed Content & ‘Librarian Superpowers’ as described by University of Illinois Library
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How the law allows libraries to distribute virtually unlimited numbers of digital copies of printed journal articles and chapters of printed monographs to patrons that they can keep forever – no checkout time limits and no digital rights management (DRM), including a review of this comparison chart
How Libraries Might Fill ILL Requests in the Future
A ©-Law 108 revision could allow libraries to fulfill repeated ILL requests without having to digitize the same content each time.
Digitization Technologies for Self-serve and Interlibrary Loan – History and State-of-the-art
DLSG shares its experiences with hundreds of its ILL customers and a thousand self-serve digitization systems customers, including ILL and self-serve digitization in the past, present and future, including systems that can fulfill ILL and DDD requests
How Patrons Might Review Monograph Chapters and Journal Articles Before Digitizing or Requesting a Digital Copy
Another ©-Law 108 revision could allow patrons to view random samplings of articles and monograph chapters before making ILL requests or taking monographs off the shelves to digitize excerpts
Multiply Monographs Utilization with a Revolutionary but Affordable New Full-text Search-match Discovery System
Full-text search for academic library collections is essential, and it’s legal. Learn why academic libraries don’t already have it and how it can be implemented quite inexpensively (via a CCA) along with a revolutionary full-text Search-match facility that finds the most relevant chapters within monographs – excerpts that patrons can legally keep forever.
Optimizing Library Superpowers (ILL and Self-serve digitization) with Concentrated Collections Areas
Section 108 represents extraordinary benefits for patrons. By maximally utilizing Section 108, libraries can justify increased budgets. HotLinks-enabled Concentrated Collections Areas make searches for relevant content highly fruitful and dramatically reduce the time to digitize content, thus strongly promoting monographs while minimizing the cost of fulfilling ILL requests, all while adding an intriguing new dimension to the library experience.
eSeminar: MyDocs and KIC Study System – Kindle® for Academic Library Patrons
MyDocs Manages Research and Study Content
Demo: MyDocs directly receives and manages content from KIC self-serve digitization systems, from DLSG’s Digital Document Delivery and ILL system for Monograph excerpts, from OER sources, and from DLSG’s CDL system
MyDocs’ DRM – Kindle® for Academic Libraries
Demo: Retrieving and managing content from ILL requests ILL content with and without Digital Rights Management (DRM) and content from DLSG’s CDL (with DRM)
KIC Study System
Demo: ReadAlong Audio, SKIM, Custom Flashcards, and instantly accessing alternate treatments of content using HotLinks Study Tool
HotLinks Research Tool
Demo: Inputting a journal article into HotLinks Research Tool and using it to find relevant journal articles
eSeminar: Revolutionary HotLinks Discovery System
  • Full-text search is undeniably essential for modern discovery, yet Libraries don’t already have full-text search, despite Federal Judge Chin’s ruling that retaining content for full-text search is legal
  • Students, researchers, faculty and scholars need more than typical full-text key word search and HotLinks Research Tool is a form of full-text search that is far more effective than key word searches
  • HotLinks can find specific monograph chapters within books that are the most relevant to a subject, as defined not by just a few search terms, but by a body of research, an entire journal article or a chapter of a textbook
  • The DLSG plan to multiply monograph utilization in several years and double monograph acquisition budgets in several more years
  • HotLinks Research Tool is ‘effectively’ an option of DLSG’s KIC self-serve digitization systems.
  • The steps for getting HotLinks Research Tool for a reading room, a special collections area, a reference section, or a new Concentrated Collections Area (CCA)
  • A HotLinks Research Tool demonstration
Instantly Research Billions of Pages
HotLinks Research Tool leads the way to a whole new era in research, taking dozens of pages of research as input, characterizing all pages, then in seconds, finding the best matches from a billion pages of monographs and other scholarly content. HotLinks then lines the results up for instant access of result after result, one per swipe/click.
Using Your KICs for CDL
Digitize Whole Books, Excerpts, and Articles - Then Export to CDL
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Create a digital reserves item
Use KIC's Metadata & Whole Book Option to scan the item and export it with accessibility metadata (PDF Bookmarks) to the ©-Law 108 Content Server(s)
Export existing PDFs or simple PDFs made with KIC (excluding the bookmarks/accessibility metadata) to the ©-Law 108 Content Server(s)
WHOLE BOOK DIGITIZATION
with PDF Bookmarks
Monographs
Textbooks
Excepts
Articles
Student clicks to access digitally
and checkout content
Student receives URL link on LMS, ILS, etc
or scans a QR code from professor
Student reads/studies content
All content can be viewed/read by MyDocs
with Digital Rights Management
eSeminar on CDL
©-Law Sections 107, 109 + US Constitution

CDL, ©-Law Sections 107-109 + US Constitution

Essential Digital Services that U.S Copyright Law Allows Libraries to Provide

Including copyright law compliant Digital Content Lending (DCL)
of reserves content by academic libraries to serve distance learning students

DLSG eSeminar Hosts

Library Services that can be provided to distance learners

These can be provided to distance learners quite cost-effectively

Digital Course Materials

Course Materials Reserves Support - Copyright Compliant Digital Content Lending

OER (Open Educational Resources)

ILL & Digital Document Delivery

Study Assistance, Including Remote Access to the Stacks

KIC Study System

Hotlinks Study Tool

KAT Stacks

Maximize Library Superpowers with Modern Concentrated Collections Areas
Why Add Concentrated Collections Areas now?
For many decades, reading rooms, reference sections, journal areas and special collections areas have been popular areas of the academic library. However, apart from replacing the photocopiers in these concentrated collections areas with self-serve scanning systems, these areas have not kept up with the times. They need modern digital discovery, either DLSG’s HotLinks full-text search-match facility or at minimum, a full-text key term search facility such as what Google Scholar offers, both of which are in compliance with copyright case law (see Authors Guild v. Google).
In theory, an academic library can get double-digit increases in resource utilization and justify a multiple percentage budget increase. In fact, total costs can fall well below 1% of an academic library’s existing budget to place one or even two percent of a library’s print collections in one or more concentrated collections areas with DLSG’s turnkey solution, including HotLinks and ultrafast book scanners. These state-of-the-art concentrated collections areas add an intriguing new dimension and compelling new reasons to visit the library as well as remotely accessing library resources. Its benefits include:
  • Highly productive browsing – so much of interest concentrated in a small space
  • A revolutionary search-match facility that locates the most relevant excerpts within monographs
  • Rapid self-serve harvesting – most of the library’s popular books are a few steps away from the library’s fastest book scanners
  • Cost-effective ILL for monograph excerpts – library staff can fill up to 10 requests in an hour, a cost that should be easily reimbursable
  • Eventual full-text search and search-match for your entire print collections – as other libraries create their concentrated collections areas with books that are in your main collections
For the library, the lower reshelving costs over the years can finance a substantial portion of the costs of creating and maintaining your concentrated collections areas. In addition, DLSG is working on a low cost system for identifying the absence of any book from the shelves within moments, allowing libraries to rely on patrons to return the books to the shelves for a further cost reduction.
Unlike traditional Special Collections areas, whose books are usually selected by topic, age or rarity, these new concentrated collections areas can be comprised of professors reading lists, researchers’ relevant books and books that have been checked out more than once in recent years. In addition to making it substantially faster and easier for patron’s to find a book and scan an excerpt (see: “Library Superpowers”), it substantially reduces the time to return the book to the shelf.
HotLinks Search-Match
Self-serve Digitization
Monograph Excerpt Request
Digital Delivery (ILL)
Creating and Maintaining
a Superior CCA
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Find Excerpts using HotLinks Research Tool

Unlike monographs, when a researcher finds a journal article that may be relevant, the researcher can request a digital copy of the article, as intended by copyright law (see ©-Law Section 108). However, even if a researcher uses Google Scholar to find a book that may be relevant, the researcher cannot request a digital copy of the entire book. Researcher must be able to find relevant excerpts within books. HotLinks Research Tool performs that function without violating current copyright law. Copyright law may be changing to support this, but meanwhile, libraries can make Aggregate CDL deals with publishers to allow their researcher to view the full text while in the library, and when outside the library, rent or buy the section or the entire book.

For Scholars and Researchers, HotLinks Research Tool provides a revolutionary search-match system that takes up to 100 pages of personal research as input and instantly matches it with billions of pages of scholarly content in the print collections of your library and the libraries of other Digital Stacks Project members. HotLinks instantly finds 100 matches representing the most relevant content from billions of pages. Researchers are able to find valuable content that they would never find with standard search systems.

HotLinks Research Tool results can be viewed as ‘sample’ pages from the entire volume that promote copyrighted content that might otherwise remain unknown.

For better compliance with the Fair Use section of copyright law, the library can enable the ability for researchers to purchase the full content.

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Instantly Research Billions of Pages
HotLinks Research Tool leads the way to a whole new era in research, taking dozens of pages of research as input, characterizing all pages, then in seconds, finding the best matches from a billion pages of monographs and other scholarly content. HotLinks then lines the results up for instant access of result after result, one per swipe/click.

Creating a Superior Concentrated Collections Area

The first step in creating a superior concentrated collections area is compiling a list of frequently accessed monographs and other books. If your intent is to create one large concentrated collections area (e.g. near a high traffic area of the main library), then it is likely that you will want to combine professors’ recommended reading lists with researchers’ relevant monographs lists and books that have been checked out more than once in the past few years.

The second step is allocating the space, moving the necessary number of bookshelves and at least one KIC digitization system into that space, then arranging for DLSG to setup the KIC system for ingesting books into a CCA. Once this has been done, you are ready to start ingesting books into the area.

The steps to ingesting books into a concentrated collections area:

  1. using DLSG’s CCA ingestion workflow, print a stack of ‘pull sheets’ (not unlike ILL pull sheets), three or four sheets per work hour
  2. gather each book, insert its pull sheet between any two pages, place it on a wheeled book cart and when finished, proceed to the KIC station in the concentrated collections area
  3. Insert a CCA key into the KIC’s USB port
  4. Scan a pull sheet, then scan the book, selecting section and chapter bookmarks while scanning. If you are using a KIC Bookeye 5, it should take a little over ten minutes to digitize an entire 300 page book at 300dpi (high image quality)
  5. Press the CCA Export button to post the search-match metadata to the HotLinks system and optionally post a searchable PDF of the book to a secure search system such as a DSE Content Server from DLSG. Note that if posted to a DSE Content Server, the content can be lent using DLSG’s stransformative CDL+ system during pandemics or perhaps anytime).
  6. Place the book on a CCA shelf.
  7. Repeat steps 4, 5 and 6 until finished scanning all books on the cart.
  8. Repeat steps 1 through 7 until all books have been ingested.

At any time after the first books have been ingested, you can try out DLSG’s HotLinks Search-Match function.

Maintaining a Superior Concentrated Collections Area

Maintaining a CCA is simple. Simply add books in the same way that you initially ingested the books. If you wish to return a book from the CCA to the stacks or remove it to offsite storage, simply enter the book information into the CCA-enabled KIC station.

Rescue Monograph Publishing, Get a Budget Increase
and Help Turn Monograph Publishing back into a Vibrantly Growing Industry
Well-written monographs by leading researchers, scholars and professors are grossly undervalued. This can be proven rather easily and affordably, providing academic and research libraries with compelling justification for substantial budget increases for monographs. In addition, libraries can further support monograph authoring and publishing and receive high value concessions from the copyrights holders by promoting and optionally enabling direct purchase of monographs.
Increase Demand for ILL and Digital Document Deliver for Monographs
Implement DLSG’s HotLinks, the revolutionary new search-match facility that finds the 100 most relevant chapters within all monographs in your library in an instant. This result cannot be achieved with simple full-text search of a few key terms (e.g. Google Scholar®), but instead, requires large amounts of content as input. This requirement serendipitously fits perfectly with ways that researchers conduct research and ways that students study. Nothing better characterizes a research topic than the text the researcher has accumulated over the months and years. For students, the text of one or several chapters currently being studied is a definitive characterization of the study topic.
Get Budget Increases
Provide reports to funding authorities showing increased use of monograph resources, and request monograph acquisition budget increases that represent a higher value (better cost-benefit ratio) than many larger expenditures the university or research institute makes. If high quality print monographs are used frequently and effectively, this investment is a bargain when compared with many of the university’s much larger budget items. As an example, doubling library monograph expenditures is only about 0.01%, or one ten thousandth of a typical R1 or R2 university’s budget. The resulting improvements in education and research are certainly worth far more. Having just half of R1 and R2 libraries gradually increase monograph purchases by 10% per year for 10 years would provide top researchers and scholars with confidence that the long and arduous process of writing a high-quality monograph would not go unrewarded, thus creating a vibrantly growing monograph publishing industry. In addition, monograph usage may increase so substantially that funding from sources outside the university or research institute may become available. In addition, DLSG’s system promotes purchases of monographs and optionally supports direct purchase of digital content for distribution using DLSG’s digital rights management system (DRM), if this feature is enabled by the library. A student, faculty member, researcher or scholar may wish to purchase a particular monograph found using DLSG’s revolutionary search-match facility, either because their library doesn’t have the monograph or because they want instant and permanent access to the entire volume forever.
The Best Solution: Search-match Enabled Concentrated Collections Areas
A great solution must be affordable and if possible, a variation of a proven strategy. Academic Libraries have had concentrated collections areas for more than a century. Examples of traditional CCAs are reading rooms, reference sections and special collections areas. In the 1960s and 1970s, these traditional CCAs were modernized by adding photocopiers. CCAs were brought [partly] into the digital age when their copiers were replaced with self-serve book digitization kiosks, over 90% of which are KIC systems from DLSG.
To fully complete the transition into the digital age, existing CCAs could be enhanced with full-text search, but something far superior is available. Rather than simply adding full-text search, existing CCAs can be dramatically enhanced with DLSG’s revolutionary new HotLinks full-text search-match facility.
The best solution may be a completely new CCA. While enhancing an existing CCA doesn’t require reorganizing to create a new special space, creating the space for a new CCA that contains items from your print collections that are most likely to be accessed, high value items that can be found using DLSG’s HotLinks full-text search-match facility. The best choices for high use items is probably a combination of professors’ recommended reading lists, researchers’ relevant monographs lists and books that have been checked out more than once in the past few years. This new breed of CCA offers great benefits to students, faculty, researchers and scholars, including:
  • For course materials – including whole books and making them full-text search-matchable and steps away from a very fast self-serve digitization kiosk (Note: during pandemics, DLSG’s CDL solution supports controlled distribution of digital course materials)
  • For professors’ recommended reading lists – including all books, not just the most important ones that are put on reserves, making them full-text search-matchable and steps away from a very fast self-serve digitization kiosk provides a far greater value than the reserves desk
  • For researchers – just ask how much value they would place on being able to full-text search-match all of the monographs in your print collections that they consider to be highly relevant for their topic of research, and being able to make several ‘ILL’ (digital document delivery) requests per month for PDFs of chapters from their chosen monographs (note: this feature is supported by DLSG’s request-fulfillment workflow, which is fulfillable at around 10 chapter requests per hour using a fast new KIC system, enabled only if the library chooses, and has extensive limiting controls to avoid work overload)
  • For general use of your main print collections – this provides full-text search and search-match for what is arguably the vast majority of the items in your collections that patrons would like to search and search-match, and it also shortens the walk to the highest quality and fastest KIC systems in your library
  • With HotLinks’ optional random access to a digital sampling of pages in the chapter, users need not depend on short bibliographic records that represent a 300 to 500 page book, but instead, can sample some pages and self-determine their interest level (Note that this optional feature emulates browsing books and leafing through the pages by book store patrons, and is considered to be supported implicitly but not explicitly by copyright law, with one potential caveat – the users should be able to purchase books that they find and like – see the next section on optional support for purchasing content)
  • Due to all of these wonderful benefits, monograph utilization will likely rise quite substantially and provide the best possible argument for budget increases
  • And finally, your extra spending on scholarly monographs will help motivate top researchers and scholars to write more monographs
Note that just a few thousand books from your main collections can provide all of the above benefits. A full-text search-match enabled Concentrated Collections Area (CCA) will effectively digitally enable most of an academic library’s print collections, legally and for very little cost. It achieves all of these objectives by:
  1. complying with ©-Law Section 108 (see Library Superpowers)
  2. not requiring the purchase of any new digital licenses
  3. not requiring the purchase of new digitization hardware – the CCA option can be added to one of your existing KIC self-serve digitization system
  4. concentrating a carefully selected 1-2% of your print collections into a small area with a fast self-serve digitization system nearby, items that are most likely to be used repeatedly – professors’ recommended reading lists, researchers’ relevant monographs list, and books that have been checked out more than once in the past few years
  5. Providing the revolutionary new HotLinks full-text search-match discovery facility for these items and capturing from each selected item, the metadata necessary for HotLinks – two to four books per hour can be processed into the CCA
  6. Providing ILL services (digital document delivery) – DLSG offers a workflow system that can fulfill ten or more requests for chapters per hour, and it has extensive throttle controls to keep costs within budget
DLSG’s turnkey HotLink-enabled CCA systems are easy to setup. The biggest job is allocating the space for the CCA, including the bookshelves that will hold a few thousand books. Here are the steps.
  1. allocate the space
  2. request recommended reading lists from professors and relevant monographs lists from researchers – you don’t need many respondents to get started. Early results will convince most of the rest of the professors and researchers that it is worth their time
  3. provision the area with an existing KIC self-serve digitization kiosks or buy the latest model, the fastest high-quality book scanner on the market
  4. Install the CCA and KIC ILL/DDD workflow options on the KIC system.
  5. Begin ingesting the selected items
The system is ready to use as soon as a sufficient number of items has been ingested.
A full-text search-match enabled CCA provides quick and substantial benefit to the patrons of individual libraries. Usage reports showing substantially increased use of monographs offer compelling rationale for budget increases.
In addition, as the number of libraries setting up these modern CCAs increase, and if these libraries procure increasing numbers of monographs, top researchers and scholars will be more motivated to write high-quality monographs, which will stimulate monograph publishing.
Negotiating Better Deals with the Publishers with an Optional [ BUY ] Button
Interestingly, a rent/buy button is also a requirement for Fair Use

It is perhaps common knowledge that many librarians consider it inappropriate or even unseemly to support purchasing content in their library or in any of its apps. However, not only does a ‘buy button’ support a clause in the Fair Use section of ©-Law (Section 107), but offering users the ability to purchase and own a copy of content that they found in the library is also a benefit to copyrights holders for which they would likely be willing to make concessions that can be of very high value to your patrons.

Among the concessions that copyrights holders could be very willing to make is to explicitly give your library the right to show users large samplings of digital pages of the chapters they found using HotLinks. The copyrights holders may require that the sample pages be randomly selected, but even so, these sample pages can uses to determine the quality and relevance of a chapter of a book or a n entire book, which is very valuable. Having confidence that a particular monograph is of sufficient quality and relevance can be used to promote 1) more ILL requests, which provides rationale for library budget increases; and 2) instant sales, for example, when instant permanent access to an entire volume is cost-justified. This will in turn promote more writing and publishing of high-quality monographs, which is exactly in line with the constitutional clause that allows copyright law to exist.

Note that DLSG’s solution finds content in excerpt size blocks that can legally be requested and fulfilled via the library’s ILL services, so the random sample percentage can be set as high as 50% or whatever percentage ensures that most users will need to make a formal ILL request or will simply opt to purchase or rent the content, which is another DLSG-provided capability.

Note also that allowing random access to some pages closely emulates the practice of perusing a book at a bookstore before purchasing it, and is highly likely to be judged as legal in a federal court and is therefore very unlikely to result in a lawsuit. Also, if the library opts to enable DLSG’s Rent/Buy button, showing random pages is probably necessary to promote sales, and therefore, quite possibly a requirement for compliance with copyright law. Although this has is not explicitly legal, it could be made so as part of the long overdue update to ©-Law Section 108, something like “… a random sample of digital pages can be made viewable to allow potential buyers and ILL requestors to judge the quality and relevance of the content for themselves.” Even as much as 50% of the pages of a chapter justifiable.

Alternately, the publisher can agree to an Aggregate CDL deal that allows libraries to display all of the content while the user is in the library.

Supercharging Study
Knowledge Imaging Centers
Knowledge Imaging Centers – high-speed self-serve digitization kiosks
for the library floor and small satellite extensions of the library that provide:
  • Fast digitization of homework assignments For electronic submission to faculty
  • Self-serve distribution of course materials Can be part of a Concentrated Collections Area
  • Digital harvesting of print collections content Best when used with HotLinks-enabled Concentrated Collections Areas
  • Capture of Textbook Chapters for use with MyDocs and KSS In addition to regular PDF and JPEG files, KIC outputs content in KSS format
  • Support for Modern Concentrated Collections Areas (CCAs) The only technology needed to create a fully functional CCA
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Modern Concentrated Collection Areas
Modern Concentrated Collection Areas maximally utilize Copyright Act Section 108 by gathering the small percentage of a library’s print collection that is most likely to be accessed, for example, faculty recommended reading lists, books that have been checked out more than once in the past few years, and researchers’ relevant books lists. Large print collections are necessary for research and high-quality education, but typically only a 1-3% of items are accessed frequently. The substantial benefits of CCAs include:
  • HotLinks search-match facility All books and monographs in a CCA are full-text search-matchable
    • a student can instantly search the entire CCA instantly at any time for relevant material while studying a textbook or other faculty-assigned materials using MyDocs with KSS
    • a faculty member can input existing course materials, search-match the materials with all content in the CCA and augment the course materials with relevant content from the CCA
  • Concentrated browsing Highly efficient and therefore highly valuable
  • Close Proximity to a KIC All books and monographs in the CCA are five to ten steps away from a KIC high-speed book digitization kiosk
  • ILL of monograph excerpts is finally viable Up to 10 requests per hour can be fulfilled by a single worker, and HotLinks finds excerpts within books. Copyright Act Section 108 allows permanent distribution of individual journal articles and small books excerpts (a library ‘superpower’). ILL for journal articles is well-supported because each article has its own citation that can be searched in databases such as WorldCat, but until now there has been no way to find a specific excerpt in a book such as one or two specific chapters without long, tedious sessions of browsing the main print collections
MyDocs with KIC Study System (KSS)
The most complete and powerful library app today
  • Organizes study materials that are
    • Scanned at the library (e.g. using a KIC)
      • course materials
      • textbook chapters
      • print collections content
    • Distributed electronically by the library
      • course materials
      • ILL and digital document delivery requests
    • Borrowed with digital rights management (i.e. CDL)
    • Downloaded for free (OER)
  • Provides Kindle®-like digital rights management for copyrighted library materials
  • Research-enables all content that it manages with HotLinks Research Tool
  • Includes proven study-enhancing tools:
    • KSS ReadAlong Audio Instantly makes ‘audio tapes’ with the option to read along
    • KSS SKIM Computer-assisted reading that works equally well on phones and PCs
      • Slow SKIM provides eye-strain free reading on small smartphones screens
      • Fast SKIM for quick review before a thorough study session
    • KSS Flashcards easy to create for study and self-test
    • HotLinks Study Tool instantly provides alternate treatments of relevant study materials (OER)
    • Study Progress Graphic an ever-present study coach
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Features Advantages
ReadAlong Audio (3 Study Methods) Reading while listening is well known to significantly improve retention. In addition, users can also use just the audio or read normally without audio.
Highlighting with FlashCards (3 Study Methods) Students are able to highlight their own private digital copy without defacing a textbook that they don't own, and instead of simply highlighting important text, KSS makes flashcards that can be used for easy review, and quiz themselves on the highlighted points. Note that frequent quizzes are well know to improve retention.
SKIM (2 Study Methods) This feature can be used in two modes: 1) at high speed (e.g. 400-600 words per minute), for pre-reading a paragraph or two just prior to ReadAlong Audio, for reviewing just before a test, or for looking for some particular information that the student hasn't been able to find by searching; and 2) at normal reading speed (e.g. at 120-400 words per minute) for more comfortable reading on the small screen of a smart phone.
Study Progress Monitoring This features shows how much of the study material has been covered once, twice or more using ReadAlong Audio, Skim and the study mode of Flashcards. In addition, it shows the results of the one and multiple flashcard quizzes.
Study Dashboard This feature shows study progress summary information for each course that is in progress, allowing students to better allocate their study time between courses.
Small Smart Phone Support KSS intelligently reflows text, pictures , diagrams, etc. for surprisingly effective studying experience on small smart phones. MyDocs Personal Network can automatically transfer study materials between Phone, Tablet and PC.
Personal Network Once in their phone, KSS packets can be automatically transferred to the students' tablet and PC for seamless switching between devices for optimal study effectiveness.
Instant Access to Research HotLinks Research Tool – Once a researcher inputs dozens of pages of personal research as well as journal articles, etc., into a KIC digitization system at the library and outputs KSS packets to MyDocs, he/she is a few touches and screen swipes away from instant access to up to 100 pages of the most relevant content in the HotLinks and DSE Content Server systems.
Instant Access to Alternate Study Materials HotLinks Study Tool – Students that use KIC digitization systems at the library to digitize a textbook chapter and output a KSS packet to MyDocs can touch and swipe to the most relevant alternate study materials from a million pages of Open Educational Resources, or from all monographs in the HotLinks and DSE Content Server systems.
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Facilitating Faculty
KIC self-serve digitization systems allow faculty to input their existing course materials, add textbook chapters and/or journal articles or other relevant content into KIC, output it all to MyDocs with KIC Study System and use HotLinks Research Tool to search-match concentrated collections areas (CCAs) and instantly find the most relevant chapters in all relevant monographs in the CCAs. A quick review of the top ten or twenty monographs can reveal content that can significantly improve the quality, breadth and depth of existing course materials or make quick work of creating entirely new course materials.
The updated or newly created course materials can either be sent to the library’s reserves desk for distribution of digital copies to students, or the book and chapter information can be provided to students, allowing them to visit the library’s CCA and quickly digitize excerpts from books using a KIC self-serve digitization system.
With KIC Composer, a feature of KIC self-serve digitization systems, faculty can easily recompose course materials by adding, removing and reorganizing content with a large touch screen and a large, visual ‘clipboard’.
Redefining/Reinventing Research
Using state-of-the-art technology, researchers can instantly build ‘mind palaces’ comprised of their own research materials, content from the library and open access content, and highlight selected content for instant hyperlinking.
DLSG has built its HotLinks system to work within existing copyrights laws and without any special agreements with copyrights holders. However, DLSG works for libraries, and that is no more evident than here – DLSG has built features into this system in anticipation of some likely copyrights law changes and to help facilitate those changes being adopted. DLSG has also built features into this system to entice publishers to agree to allow full access to monograph content while in the library and random pages of chapters while not in the library.
The US copyright office has created a Section 108 study group to recommend changes, and one likely change is to allow digital access to full content while in the library and digital access to small random samples of content, provided the library implements policies to avoid negative impact on copyrights holders revenue. The benefits of these section 108 changes to researchers and graduate students are so substantial that DLSG preemptively added support for them.
Alternately, and to avoid waiting for changes to copyright law, DLSG has implemented features that can compel a publisher to agree to a system of Aggregate CDL, allowing libraries to lend digitally (via DLSG’s transformative CDL+), all content purchased from that publisher in an aggregate one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio.
Innovating Innovation
Hello,

I’m Ted Webb, CEO and chief innovator at Image Access and DLSG. Innovation is my greatest passion and I am committed to using innovative technologies to maximize the innovative potential of others. My working definition of innovation is: changes to products, services, systems and processes that have never been done before and that improve people’s lives, as well as repeatable solutions to common problems that have never been done before and improve people’s lives.
Many of the most far-reaching innovations are based on PhD-level scientific research. My favorite example of how world-changing PhD-level scientific research can be is on how chemistry prevented mass starvation. In the late 19th century, the world was beginning to run out of the fertilizer it needed to feed its people. Some countries had even begun to sail halfway around the world to collect the last big supplies of guano, scientific discovery made it possible to manufacture unlimited amounts of fertilizer. The discovery of chemistry led to the discovery of nitrates, the most essential ingredient in fertilizer. Chemistry also supported the scientific innovation of a method of creating nitrates from air, and the engineering innovation that made nitrates producible in factories in virtually unlimited quantities.
Good monographs are grossly underappreciated and underutilized. DLSG is probably in the best position to provide full-text digital discovery and integrated digital access to monograph print collections – over 90% of ILL and self-serve digitization at US universities is done using DLSG technologies. In addition, DLSG has the capacity to develop sophisticated and highly innovative discovery algorithms that go beyond standard search algorithms. As such, my commitment to improving innovation compels me to apply DLSG’s substantial assets and resources to create innovative new technologies that maximize utilization of monographs by professors, faculty and students.
Over the past six years, DLSG has invested a quarter of a million software development professional hours (125 years) to develop the Digital Stacks Ecosystem (DSE). When COVID hit and distance learning was an emergency need and many libraries were asking for controlled digital lending, DLSG postponed the release of its DSE to develop a CDL system. DLSG’s highly transformative CDL+ solution has been available since spring of 2021, although refinements continue even now. DLSG is now rolling out turnkey Concentrated Collections Areas, arguably the highest value, lowest cost strategy for maximizing utilization of monograph print collections.
In addition to improving innovation in others, I have a short list of big innovations that I am intent on pursuing. However, as I have remained dedicated to serving academic libraries for the past 17 years, I will continue my commitment until the $50+ billion in content licenses locked in library print collections are leveraged as completely into the digital age as copyright laws will allow.


Sincerely,




Ted Webb, CEO Image Access, Inc. / DLSG
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Overview
Customers Served
Student Patrons
Digital submission of printed homework, self-serve digitization of course materials, digital harvesting of print collections content, study tools for textbook content, and modern concentrated collections areas
Faculty Patrons
Creation and updating of course materials using HotLinks revolutionary full-text search-match discovery to derive maximum benefit from library collections, and modern Hotlinks discovery-enabled concentrated collections areas
Research Patrons
HotLinks revolutionary full-text search-match discovery derives maximum benefit from library collections
Academic Libraries
Dramatically improve monograph collections utilization while freeing up space for [collaborative] study and justifying budget increases that easily cover the costs of the new services; and improve stacks maintenance efficiency
Public Libraries
Offer state-of-the-art study tools to student patrons and state-of-the-art research tools to scholars while providing digital age copier replacements to all patrons
Solutions
Plug-n-play ©-Law 108 Solutions
  • KIC easy-to-use, high-speed, high-quality self-serve digitization kiosks
  • BSCAN ILL high-speed high-quality ILL and digital document delivery systems
  • Opus systems for digital archival, preservation and projects
  • High quality affordable scanners: Bookeye, Click Mini and Bookedge
Solutions that Optimize ©-Law 108
Modern HotLinks-enabled Concentrated Collections Areas (CCAs) that dramatically improve print collections utilization and bring exciting new dimension to the library
Revolutionary New Discovery
Designed especially for students, faculty and researchers, HotLinks takes entire chapters and dozens of pages of research and journal articles as input and performs full-text search-matches on a billion content pages in seconds
Controlled Digital Lending (CDL)
Supporting legal uses today and ready for pending updates to copyright law
Digital Stacks Ecosystem
The comprehensive hybrid library solution that maximizes print collections value in the digital age
Image Access and DLSG
History
In 1993, founded as a digitization technology provider
In 1998, sold first Bookeye book scanner
In 2004-2005, released KIC, BSCAN ILL & Opus
In 2005, formed the DLSG division of Image Access
By 2015, DLSG serves half of students at US universities
2015-2021 invested 250,000 hours to develop DSE
2020-2021 developed CDL+ as requested by libraries
In 2022, released turnkey Concentrated Collections Areas (CCAs)
DLSG is Your Best Value
unmatched reputation for great products and services, and modest prices, favoring value over profits – DLSG averaged 3% profits for 15 years
Most Libraries Choose DLSG
DLSG’s entirely merit-based success is undisputable – 80-95% market shares for its self-serve, ILL and Opus digitization products without help from ‘influential friends’
Maximizing Print Collections Value
DLSG is dedicated to maximizing print collections value, especially for monographs, which have become grossly underappreciated
Innovation is in Our DNA
Over the past 30 years, while university budgets have risen dramatically, library shares fell from around 3% to 1.5% today. Libraries have the content, but they need DLSG’s transformative innovations to digitally supercharge that content and restore their value to the university.