Information resource sharing Resource sharing plays a crucial role in education, democracy, economic growth, health and welfare and personal development. It facilitates access to a wide range of information, which would not otherwise be available to the user, library or country requesting it. Resource sharing is not a mechanism to reduce costs but to expand availability to those who, for economic, technical or social reasons cannot have access to the information directly. Providing access to a digital format of a protected work to a user for a legitimate purpose such as research or study should be a permitted act under copyright law. Lending Non-commercial public lending is not an activity that has traditionally been controlled by copyright law.
Public lending is essential to culture and education.
It should be available to all. Information packaged in all formats has and will become part of the lending stock. Lending in turn assists in the marketing of commercially packaged information and encourages sales. Libraries are, in effect, catalysts for the sale of information in all of its formats. Therefore, any legal or contractual restraints put on lending would be to the disadvantage of rights holders as well as to the libraries themselves.