Dear Reader—

We hope you and your family had a relaxing Memorial Day Weekend, and we hope you spent your weekend reading from the National Emergency Library. If you are enjoying the NEL or simply want to talk about the books you have borrowed from our library, please let us know. And we will not share your response unless you give explicit permission. 

Below are highlights from the library world. And as always, thank you for your generous support.

Sizzle Then Fizzle: Buzzy Titles and Borrowing Digitized Books. Have you ever wondered what happens to popular books after their day in the sun has passed? In this blog post we discuss two titles that have received a lot of interest, but as we uncovered, most individuals only wanted to check the book for a certain “newsy” passage.

Libraries Have Never Needed Permission To Lend Books, And The Move To Change That Is A Big Problem. In case you have been following the latest on the National Emergency Library, Mike Masnick of TechDirt has a comprehensive breakdown of the recent blog by Kyle Courtney, Copyright Advisor at Harvard Library, in addition to other happenings around the NEL.

By Retraining Staff, We Uncover Rare Gems. We have some good news for this extraordinary time: we are bringing back furloughed scanners and hiring experts to teach our staff how to do new and safe socially distanced scanning activities for the Library. Our scanners are uncovering rare gems and learning new skills, like how to digitize 78rpm records.

How to Binge Watch Some Great Classic Sci-Fi for Free. Love classic science fiction, but cannot find what you want to watch on television? We have you covered. ZDNet has a guide—including some browser extension tips and tricks—about how to watch science fiction classics from our collection.

ICYMI: Controlled Digital Lending: Getting Books to Students During the Pandemic & Beyond. Our friends at Public Knowledge hosted a webinar last Friday about controlled digital lending. Moderated by Public Knowledge, Counsel, Meredith Rose, the session included Cory Doctorow, author of Radicalized and Walkaway, special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and visiting professor of practice in library science at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Chris Freeland, Director of Open Libraries at the Internet Archive; Lisa Petrides, Founder and CEO of Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education; and Lisa Weaver, Director, Collections & Program Development at Hamilton Public Library. If you missed the event, the video can be found in the link above.

Upcoming Webinars and Events. If you’re interested in learning how libraries can use controlled digital lending in addition to the temporary National Emergency Library, please join Chris Freeland, Director of Open Libraries, who will be leading a series of webinars on this topic. Freeland will explain how the Internet Archive works: from scanning book centers to how books are made available online. Please check the link for webinar dates.

ICYMI: We have a Medium channel. In case you ever miss a blog on our website, you can find them here.

Don’t forget to keep up with updates from the Internet Archive team by following us on Twitter and visiting our website.