Public Lending Right

What is it?

This is the right of an author to receive from the public purse a payment for the loan of works from public libraries. The first system was established in Denmark in the 1940s and PLR is now part of  EU and national law.  PLR came into Irish law on 4thDecember 2007, when the Copyright and Related Rights (Amendment) Act 2007 was signed by the President.

How does it work?

The current Irish scheme is modelled on the well established and successful UK system. Authors (and illustrators etc.) are required to register their personal details (name, address, etc.) and the details (title, date of publication, ISBN, etc.) of each edition of each book they wish to claim PLR for.

The details are entered into an author/title database and checked against bibliographic databases

Where does the information come from?

A PLR computer module is installed on the computerised library management system of each library authority. This module extracts details of each relevant item loaned. At the end of the PLR period, the library loans data will be matched to the author/title data and a report of the number of times each registered book was issued during that period will be produced. The amount of money to be paid to each registered author will then be calculated by multiplying the rate per loan by the number of loans. A minimum and maximum payment will be set.

Payments will then be made to each author.

Below is the list of the top 20 items borrowed (and registered for PLR) for December 2009 in South Dublin Libraries