There are three types of loans in Ebook Central:
- NL (Non-linear Lending) loan.
- When a book has been purchased with the NL access model, that book has a maximum days-of-use allotment per year. When a patron uses an NL book sufficiently (see trigger events), it counts as a loan (or days-of-use deduction) against the book.
- STL (Short-Term Loan) due to Extended Access coverage.
- Librarians can enable Extended Access so that when books owned with the 1-user or 3-user access model are already fully in use, or a book owned with the NL access model has no more days-of-use available for the year, a patron's sufficient use of the book (see trigger events) will initiate an STL, auto-upgrade, or auto-purchase of the book for the patron.
- STL (Short-Term Loan) on a DDA-discoverable book.
- DDA-discoverable books are un-owned books that your librarians have made visible to patrons. When a patron uses a DDA-discoverable book sufficiently (see trigger events), it triggers an STL or auto-purchase of the book.
Admins can set whether users are prompted before a loan is triggered, either for all loans or only for STL on DDA.
For each type of loan, admins can set a fixed duration for all loans of that type, or admins can set optional loan lengths and let the user decide which loan length they would like. For users to be able to choose the loan length, prompting needs to be turned on. (If the admin has set loan-length options, but prompting is not turned on, the loan will default to the shortest duration indicated.)
To set whether users are prompted before an NL loan or an STL for Extended Access or DDA is triggered:
- Go into LibCentral
- Under the “Settings” tab
- Select “System”
- The “System Settings” page:
The radio-button settings mean the following:
- Yes = For all loan types, user will be prompted before the trigger of the loan occurs. Loan types: a) NL, b) STL due to Extended Access, c) STL on a DDA book.
- No = User will not be prompted or otherwise notified when a loan of any type occurs.
- DDA = Only for STL on a DDA book will user be prompted before the trigger of the loan occurs.
To set the duration options for NL loans:
- Go into LibCentral
- Under the “Settings” tab
- Select “Access Permissions”
- Click on the “Permission ID” of the group you are setting this for (the default is to have just one group called “Guest”, in which case click on “Guest”)
- Click on the “Owned” tab
- The "Owned Access Permissions" page, section for NL loan:

- Note that you can set different duration options based on whether the loan is for online reading (which is triggered by view, copy, print, or chapter download), or for full-download (which is triggered only by doing a full download). The NL loan duration for a full download determines the duration of the full download.
To set the STL duration options for both DDA and Extended Access:
- Go into LibCentral
- Under the “Settings” tab
- Select “Access Permissions”
- Click on the “Permission ID” of the group you are setting this for (the default is to have just one group called “Guest”, in which case click on “Guest”)
- Click on the “DDA” tab
- The “DDA Access Permissions” page - the STL duration settings apply to both DDA and Extended Access STL:
- Note that you can set different duration options whether STL is for online reading (which is triggered by view, copy, print, or chapter download), or for full-download (which is triggered only by doing a full download). The STL duration for a full download determines the duration of the full download.
- If a publisher does not offer one of the selected STL-duration options, it will not be offered for that publisher's books