There are five hundred thousands Chinese books (volumes) will be digitalized in the CADAL project, among which more than two hundred thousands are modern academic monographs, two hundred thousands Master's or Doctor's dissertations of member libraries, one hundred thousands ancient books and other valuable traditional cultural resources.
According to the arrangement of CADAL, five hundred thousands English books for digitalization will be provided by the US side , and the main contents for processing will be determined by the US Digital Library Federation (DLF).

1. Degree dissertation

All of Doctor's and a part of master's dissertations in each member institutions will be digitalized by their own. Generally, only those dissertations produced since early 1980s, or, if possible, more earlier, will be digitalized.
The dissertation selection will be carried out separately by member institutions and has no possibility of overlap, and the selection of contents for processing is easy. Thus, at the early stage of CADAL, the degree dissertations will be firstly digitalized. In 2003,one hundred thousands dissertations will be processed, accounting to 50% of the total.

2. Modern Chinese books

Modern Chinese book titles will be selected in term of publishers to reduce the possibility of content overlap to least extent. Book titles of Grade A publishers will be firstly distributed to each partner institution. After finishing title selection under the given publisher, member institutions should present the list of selected books to Specialist Committee of CADAL for checking and copyright resolving. Then, the selected books will be searched via CALIS United Catalog Database for their harboring-libraries, and digitalized at the nearest partner institution.

3. English books

As to English books for digitalization, US side will be responsible for their selection and transportation, and the CAS Graduate College for their entry, acceptance, and preparation of returning books to the US. One north and one south digitalizing centers will be set up for the processing of English books.

4. Traditional cultural resources

CADAL member libraries can select unique ancient books and traditional cultural resources in their own libraries for digitalization. The titles or contents of selected resources will be present to the Managment Center of CADAL for approval, and then digitalized to construct a database of special topics.
The ancient books selected in Complete Collection in Four Repositories (Si Ku Quan Shu) Complete Collection in Four Repositories II (Xu Xiu Si Ku Quan Shu) will be digitalized through cooperation.

5. Cooperation, share and coordination of digital resources

CADAL Project will positively cooperate and coordinate with other digital libraries and IT corporations across the nation to co- construct and share digital library resources. A special working group will be set up for the project to negotiate with above institutions, and introduce naked data of existing library resources, under the rules of mutual reciprocities. The introduced naked data will be processed according to the standards made by CADAL to produce e-books. In this way, the workload of book accommodation and scanning will be reduced, and the project schedule be accelerated.