Tag Archives: libraries

Bay State College ‘Flips to Digital’ by Donating Entire College Library to the Internet Archive

Bay State College’s Boston Campus has donated its entire undergraduate library to the Internet Archive so that the digital library can preserve and scan the books, while allowing Bay State to gain much needed open space for student collaboration. By donating and scanning its 11,000-volume collection centered on fashion, criminal justice, allied health, and business books, Bay State’s Boston campus decided to “flip entirely to digital.”

When it came to what to do with the books, Jessica Neave, librarian at Bay State College, had to get creative. “I didn’t have a library close by willing to take our collection,” Neave explained. Shortly after reaching out to our partners at Better World Books, she stumbled upon the Inside Higher Education article about the Marygrove College Library donation. This led Neave to our physical item donation form, where she laid out her library’s tight timeline to deaccession its entire print collection. “You guys made it so easy,” Bay State’s librarian said. “It couldn’t have been any easier!”

Internet Archive team members having fun with the task of packing and shipping an entire library collection.

Under the direction of Neave, an Internet Archive team packed and shipped the 11,000 books in the first week of December.

Considering the future of Bay State’s books, its librarian is hopeful, noting, “Thanks to the Internet Archive, the books can live on as a cohesive collection.” Patrons can look forward to thumbing through historic fashion and textile books, texts on the history of the Civil Rights Movement, graphic novels, and even Bay State’s collection of historically banned young adult books.

Digitization Saves Marygrove College Library After Closure

When Marygrove College in Detroit decided to close its doors in 2019 due to financial pressures, the first question on the minds of many community members was: what about the library?  Today, the entire Marygrove College community is celebrating the reopening of the Marygrove College Library in partnership with the Internet Archive.

Valerie Deering, Marygrove College Class of 1972, in the closed Marygrove College Library stacks.

Marygrove College’s roots go back to 1905 when it was started by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a progressive Catholic order known for its commitment to social justice. Founded as a women’s institution, it became co-ed and predominantly African American over time, changing with the demographics of its neighborhood in northwest Detroit.

The liberal arts college, which typically had an enrollment of less than 1,000, attracted students interested in teacher education and social work programs, as well as English, history, philosophy and religious studies. The college offered graduate programs and some alumni went on to become physicians, lawyers and scientists.

True to its mission, Marygrove often served students from marginalized communities with limited means. Changes in access to federal Pell grants hurt the institution’s finances, and enrollment dwindled in recent years.

“The college was deeply in debt. Like many small colleges, institutional scholarships don’t pay the bills. The school was borrowing to make payroll. It was not a good picture,” says Marygrove President Elizabeth Burns. “With great sorrow, the board voted in summer 2017 to close undergraduate programs.”

The institution tried to survive by offering only graduate programs – many online. But that model proved to be unsustainable. In December of 2019, Marygrove closed its doors for good.

“It was very difficult,” says Frank Rashid, who taught English at the college for 37 years and lives within a mile of the campus. “It was a great place to teach. Despite our size and obscurity, we had a strong faculty and great students.”

As the college emptied its buildings, the fate of Marygrove’s beloved library was up in the air.

Marygrove’s solution: Donate the entire library to the Internet Archive for digitization and preservation.

As the college emptied its buildings, the fate of Marygrove’s beloved library was up in the air. No other library was able to house the entire collection, which included more than 70,000 books and 3,000 journals, in addition to microfilm, maps, visual media, and more. The college explored selling the books, but buyers were only interested in portions of the collection. Even disposing of the library content would cost thousands of dollars that the college couldn’t afford.

Marygrove’s solution: Donate the entire library to the Internet Archive for digitization and preservation.

“We were able to preserve the entire collection that we had built over the decades and make it available to everyone,” Burns says.

The board and alumni, while sad to see the college close, were supportive of the decision.

“There was a sense that all was not lost,” Burns says. “The legacy of the collection will be available for ongoing education. That really helped ease the pain of the transition.”

The library had a rich collection of books in history (particularly primary sources on local Detroit studies and Michigan), English, philosophy, religious studies, social work, political science, economics, psychology, business and social justice.

“The library was the best kept secret at Marygrove,” says Brenda Bryant, who started the nation’s first master’s degree program in social justice at the college 20 years ago. While the closure of the building was heartbreaking, she says having the collection digitized provides access to its great array of nonfiction and fiction books (such as The God of Small Things by Arhundati Roy) , as well as films about social justice movements.

The God of Small Things by Arhundati Roy, showing the Marygrove College Library stamp on the title page.

Byrant says the college was ahead of its time in recognizing the importance of studying these issues. With racial equity, immigration and other social justice issues so relevant today, she hopes people will take the opportunity to read about the history of prior movements.

The value of the collection extends well beyond the Marygrove community. Librarians from Wayne State University, also located in Detroit, share an admiration for Marygrove’s collection and decision to digitize.

“Marygrove has been fundamental for Detroit in educating first-generation, low-income college students and providing high quality education to the community,” says Alexandra Sarkcozy, a liaison librarian for history at Wayne State. “The librarians built a robust academic collection and took beautiful care of it. I think it’s wonderful that it was able to be preserved.”

And, as Wayne State thinks about how to lend out its own digital materials, it may consider Controlled Digital Lending as a model, adds Sarkcozy, which is how the Marygrove collections are being made available to users.

Marygrove College Library materials packed for shipping, digitization and preservation by Internet Archive.

Using Controlled Digital Lending practices with the Marygrove collections—lending out a digital copy one at a time—felt like a responsible way to continue to provide access, says Burns. And rare materials that aren’t traditionally prioritized are not lost to history.

Rashid says he was initially reluctant to let go of the print materials, but realized that digital lending opened up the possibility of access around the globe. “We are trying to share resources with scholars and students elsewhere,” says Rashid, noting it also has the additional convenience of researchers being able to look up information from home.

The Archive hired local help to pack up the Marygrove books, load them onto trucks, and transport them to centers for storage and scanning. The empty library was repurposed as a lecture hall, sports facility and cafeteria for a new high school that now operates on the campus.

Mary Kickham-Samy served as the director of the library at Marygrove from 2017 until its closure in December 2019. She was glad to see the collection donated intact and thinks alumni, in particular, will enjoy browsing through the library. “It’s beautiful the way Internet Archive has captured the materials…It’s just a win-win situation,” said Kickham-Samy, who is grateful that community members and researchers everywhere will now have access to the collection.

Valerie Deering using the Marygrove College Library collection at Internet Archive in the former physical library.

“When I heard Marygrove was going to be closing, it broke my heart,” said Valerie Deering, a poet and 1972 graduate of Marygrove. Deering didn’t fully realize what it would mean to digitize the library until she started browsing the collection online. “Actually seeing it now—this was a stroke of genius. This Internet library stuff is a pretty good idea.”

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Copyright Expert on Publishers Lawsuit: “The idea that lending a book is illegal is just wrong”

On July 22, 2020, Pamela Samuelson, Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law and Information at the University of California, Berkeley, spoke at a press conference about the copyright lawsuit against the Internet Archive brought by the publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House. These are her remarks:

Good afternoon. Very happy to be here with you today. The Authors Alliance has several thousand members around the world and we have endorsed the controlled digital lending as a fair use and I think that this is a lawsuit I hoped would never happen. Because controlled digital lending has been going on for such a long time, it’s really tragic that at this time of pandemic that the publishers would try to basically cut off even access to a digital public library like the Internet Archive is running.

I don’t know about your library, but my libraries in California are closed. I can’t get any books out of even the University of California Berkeley Library at this point, the whole campus is closed, and so while I haven’t been using the Open Library for my research purposes because they don’t have the books in it that I need, I do think that that it’s just a heartless, tragic thing that this lawsuit is really trying to stop a very positive thing that Internet Archive has been doing.

I’m one of the legal scholars who has endorsed the controlled digital lending statement. I think that even under some second circuit opinions, one can say that the Open Library has actually a utility-enhancing transformative use. It’s certainly nonprofit, it’s educational, and it promotes literacy and many, many positive things. I think that the idea that lending a book is illegal is just wrong.

I would actually like to point out that in Germany, where copyright laws are generally stronger than in the United States, that the Darmstadt Technical University was able to succeed in its non-infringement claim for digitizing a book, and here’s the important point: just because the publisher wanted to license an ebook to that library, the Court of Justice of the European Union said it’s not an infringement for the library to actually digitize one of its own books and make that book available to the public. So if that’s true in Germany, I think it should be true in the US as well.

About the speaker:

Pamela Samuelson is the Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law and Information at the University of California, Berkeley. She is recognized as a pioneer in digital copyright law, intellectual property, cyberlaw and information policy. Since 1996, she has held a joint appointment at Berkeley Law School and UC Berkeley’s School of Information. Samuelson is a director of the internationally-renowned Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. She is co-founder and chair of the board of Authors Alliance, a nonprofit organization that promotes the public interest in access to knowledge. She also serves on the board of directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as on the advisory boards for the Electronic Privacy Information Center , the Center for Democracy & Technology, Public Knowledge, and the Berkeley Center for New Media.

Libraries have been bringing older books to digital learners: Four publishers sue to stop it

I wanted to share my thoughts in response to the lawsuit against the Internet Archive filed on June 1 by the publishers Hachette, Harpercollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House.

I founded the Internet Archive, a non-profit library, 24 years ago as we brought the world digital. As a library we collect and preserve books, music, video and webpages to make a great Internet library.

We have had the honor to partner with over 1,000 different libraries, such as the Library of Congress and the Boston Public Library, to accomplish this by scanning books and collecting webpages and more. In short, the Internet Archive does what libraries have always done: we buy, collect, preserve, and share our common culture.

But remember March of this year—we went home on a Friday and were told our schools were not reopening on Monday. We got cries for help from teachers and librarians who needed to teach without physical access to the books they had purchased.

Over 130 libraries endorsed lending books from our collections, and we used Controlled Digital Lending technology to do it in a controlled, respectful way.  We lent books that we own—at the Internet Archive and also the other endorsing libraries. These books were purchased and we knew they were not circulating physically. They were all locked up. In total, 650 million books were locked up just in public libraries alone.  Because of that, we felt we could, and should, and needed to make the digitized versions of those books available to students in a controlled way to help during a global emergency. As the emergency receded, we knew libraries could return to loaning physical books and the books would be withdrawn from digital circulation. It was a lending system that we could scale up immediately and then shut back down again by June 30th.

And then, on June 1st, we were sued by four publishers and they demanded we stop lending digitized books in general and then they also demanded we permanently destroy millions of digital books. Even though the temporary National Emergency Library was closed before June 30th, the planned end date, and we are back to traditional controlled digital lending, the publishers have not backed down.

Schools and libraries are now preparing for a “Digital Fall Semester” for students all over the world, and the publishers are still suing.

Please remember that what libraries do is Buy, Preserve, and Lend books.

Controlled Digital Lending is a respectful and balanced way to bring our print collections to digital learners. A physical book, once digital, is available to only one reader at a time. Going on for nine years and now practiced by hundreds of libraries, Controlled Digital Lending is a longstanding, widespread library practice.

What is at stake with this suit may sound insignificant—that it is just Controlled Digital Lending—but please remember– this is fundamental to what libraries do: buy, preserve, and lend.   

With this suit, the publishers are saying that in the digital world, we cannot buy books anymore, we can only license and on their terms; we can only preserve in ways for which they have granted explicit permission, and for only as long as they grant permission; and we cannot lend what we have paid for because we do not own it.  This is not a rule of law, this is the rule by license. This does not make sense. 

We say that libraries have the right to buy books, preserve them, and lend them even in the digital world. This is particularly important with the books that we own physically, because learners now need them digitally.

This lawsuit is already having a chilling impact on the Digital Fall Semester we’re about to embark on. The stakes are high for so many students who will be forced to learn at home via the Internet or not learn at all.  

Librarians, publishers, authors—all of us—should be working together during this pandemic to help teachers, parents and especially the students.

I call on the executives at Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House to come together with us to help solve the pressing challenges to access to knowledge during this pandemic. 


Please drop this needless lawsuit.  

–Brewster Kahle, July 22, 2020

Major Public Interest Group Launches Campaign to Let Libraries Fight Back

This month, Public Knowledge, a major public interest group promoting an open internet, launched a new campaign: Tell Congress to Let Libraries Fight Back

Fight back against what? you may be wondering. 

Put simply, the campaign asks Congress to clarify libraries’ right to buy and lend books today as they have done for centuries.

Today, amidst a skyrocketing demand for digital books, many books are not available on digital shelves at any price because there are no commercially available  digital versions of older titles.  This gap limits how libraries can serve their patrons.

“Many libraries are currently closed, and sadly it looks like they may be for months to come,” said John Bergmayer, Legal Director of Public Knowledge.  “We need to make sure that libraries can continue serving their communities, not just during the pandemic, but after, as tightened budgets put the squeeze on library services and limit the scope of their collections.”

Filling the Gap with Controlled Digital Lending

Libraries have begun making and lending out digital versions of physical works in their collections based on current legal protections—a practice called Controlled Digital Lending, or CDL. As Public Knowledge’s Let Libraries Fight Back campaign explains: 

CDL is a powerful tool to bridge the gap between print and electronic resources. Under CDL, a digital copy of a physical book can only be read and used by one person at a time. Only one person can “borrow” an electronic book at once,  and while it is being lent electronically, the library takes the physical book out of circulation.

CDL allows libraries to reach their patrons even when those patrons can’t make it to the physical library — a problem that’s been more prevalent than ever during the pandemic. Without programs like this, library patrons are prevented from accessing a world of content and information — and low-income, rural, and other marginalized communities are hit the hardest.

However, Public Knowledge acknowledges that the challenge extends beyond print materials. “Controlled Digital Lending makes it so that a library’s existing print collection is more useful, and can be accessed remotely,” explained Bergmayer. “But we also need to make sure that libraries can acquire digital-native books and other media under the same terms they have always operated under.”

Learn More

Public Knowledge believes a true solution may take Congressional action, so they are calling upon the public to tell Congress to ensure that libraries are free to buy ebooks and other electronic materials and lend them out, just as they can with physical media.

Learn how you can support pro-library policies with Public Knowledge’s Let Libraries Fight Back Campaign.

Two major library groups join chorus of support for controlled digital lending

This week, two major library organizations affirmed their commitment to the longstanding and widespread library practice of digitizing physical books they own and lending out secured digital versions. The practice, controlled digital lending (CDL), is the digital equivalent of traditional library lending. 

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) joined hundreds of individual libraries and supporters in signing a public position statement in support of controlled digital lending

ARL and SPARC collectively represent over 300 academic and research libraries in the U.S. and Canada. ARL advocates on behalf of research libraries and home institutions on many issues and its members include government institutions, including the National Library of Medicine and the National Archives, as well as the continent’s largest land grant institutions and Ivy League colleges. SPARC focuses on enabling the open sharing of research outputs and educational materials, arguing that such access democratizes access to information knowledge and increases the return on investment in research and education.

Announcing their support, SPARC said, “CDL plays an important role in many libraries, and has been particularly critical to many academic and research libraries as they work to support students, faculty, and researchers through this pandemic.” SPARC also issued a call to action to others in the library community to add their support.

ARL concurred, “CDL is a practice rooted in the fair use right of the US Copyright Act and recent judicial interpretations of that right. During the COVID-19 pandemic in particular, many academic and research libraries have relied on CDL to ensure academic and research continuity at a time when many physical collections have been inaccessible.”

The Internet Archive’s Open Libraries program is powered by controlled digital lending and we welcome the support of other libraries. As libraries are closed across the globe because of COVID-19, millions of digitized books are still available for free to be borrowed by learn-at-home students and readers.

When An Island Shuts Down: Aruba & the National Emergency Library

The island nation of Aruba, population 110,000, lies 18 miles north of Venezuela, part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

On March 15, the small island nation of Aruba, part of the Dutch Caribbean, closed its borders to visitors. Cruise ships packed with tourists stopped coming. Casinos, libraries and schools shut their doors, as Aruba’s 110,000 residents locked down to halt the spread of COVID-19.

That’s when the Biblioteca Nacional Aruba (National Library of Aruba) swung into action. 

Librarians quickly gathered reading lists from students, parents and schools. With high school graduation exams just a month away, the required literature books would be crucial. Aruban students are tested on books in Dutch, English, Spanish and their native language of Papiamento. “Just before your literary final exams, you need to re-read the books,” explained Peter Scholing, who leads digitization efforts at the National Library of Aruba. “The libraries are closed. Your school libraries are closed. You can order from Amazon, but it takes weeks and weeks to arrive. If you are in an emergency, then you hope your books are online.”

Peter Scholing of the National Library of Aruba also works with UNESCO, preserving cultural heritage

Scholing was relieved to discover that most of the required literature in English and Spanish was available in the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library. As library staff moved to work from home, they grabbed the tools to digitize the books in Papiamento that were missing. Many local authors were easy to track down and most gladly gave permission for free downloads or loaning their works. Scholing reports, “Some of them choose digital lending. But a lot of them  say, ‘Well it was a limited print run….I’ve sold all the copies of my books, now you can just make it available for download.’

Preservation Pays Off

Classroom in Aruba, 1944, filled with children of expatriates, working in oil refineries.

For many years, the library’s small Special Collections staff had been diligently digitizing key collections: photographs, historic texts, newspapers, and perhaps the world’s largest collection of texts in Papiamento. But with few technical resources, the National Library of Aruba had no way to provide access to those works. Scholing says the Internet Archive proved to be the “missing link.” In March 2019, the Library was able to unveil its new Digital Collection, 18,800 texts, videos and audio now accessible to the world on archive.org. Today, with libraries and schools closed, these materials are the keys to unlocking the doors to online learning.

 “We didn’t imagine something like the Covid crisis could happen,” said Scholing. “But for our preservation efforts, this is the Big One. We are really lucky to be able to provide access to information that we couldn’t otherwise without the Internet Archive.”

This Papiamento literary journal is among the 18,800 items now online thanks to the Biblioteca Nacional Aruba

When Waitlists Won’t Work

Novels, biographies and non-fiction titles in Papiamento are part of the Aruban curriculum and now many are accessible online

Although Scholing had permission from the authors to lend their recent books, several times we accidentally reinstituted the waiting list, since the National Emergency Library does not include books from the last five years. That meant students reading the work suddenly would have had to wait, sometimes for weeks, to move up the waiting list. Scholing wrote to us immediately:  “There must be an alternative. I’m getting emails from students and teachers already.”

Eventually we worked out the kinks so Aruba’s books in the National Emergency Library wouldn’t get taken down. In addition, hundreds of texts in Papiamento from 1844-2020 are now available without waitlist. It’s part of a bigger vision on the island to teach students to read and write the language they speak at a higher level. “A lot of textbooks come straight from the Netherlands…you are reading about snow, trains and windmills,” Scholing explained. “It’s better to use something from a newspaper or magazine produced locally…It’s their own context. It speaks more to them.”

He even received this note from a local author, written in Papiamento:

Peter aprecia, (Dear Peter,)

Hopi admiracion pa e trabou cu bo ta desplegando pa Aruba y nos hendenan.

(A lot of admiration for the work that you are carrying out for Aruba and for our people.)

This week, schools in Aruba are scheduled to reopen. Since March, the library has tripled the number of items in its digital collection, and visitors have increased by 300%. Scholing sees this as evidence that  the National Emergency Library will have lasting benefit. “All the thresholds and barriers to access this unique information have been lifted, once you put it online.”

You can now access newspapers, photos, maps, government publications, literature and rare books from Aruba in their collection at the Internet Archive.

MY ONLINE MEMORY–Guest Curating the Archive by Jessamyn West

Screen Shot 2015-12-15 at 6.22.45 PMI work at the Internet Archive via the Open Library project but I was a crate digger here long before that. My earliest memories of the Archive are using the Wayback Machine to find old copies of my first web sites (many now lost to 302 redirects) and other memory-holed content. I lived on the West Coast, was fresh out of library school at the University of Washington and used my nascent blog to yammer on about, among other things, all the great free culture stuff on the Web. The old links to my blog still work but the same can’t be said for an incredible amount of content online. The Internet Archive is the online memory for many of us.

I use the internet to make the local global, and vice versa. Here are some other things I love at the Internet Archive.

Maps of Home (and elsewhere)

I can see my house from here.

I can see my house from here.

My home in Vermont is in a bit of an Internet shadow. This is the good news and the bad news. One of the things this means is that if I want to go hiking or exploring, there may not be a ready online resource I can consult for trail and terrain maps. USGS maps are supposedly free but getting access to them used to be complicated if not impossible. Enter the Libre Map Project where a team of people donated money and time and resources to make USGS maps of all fifty states available and searchable from one central location at the Internet Archive. Oh hey look, there’s a review by me from 2009.

Family Histories (mine and others’)

The last Joseph Thomas West listed on this page is my grandfather. Joseph Thomas West IV was my dad. I found this book once before, digging through Massachusetts libraries shortly after college. I had a bunch of its pages stuffed into a folder someplace. It was a joy to find it again.

page from the town history of princeton

On the other side of my family, my great-grandparents were just arriving in the US at the turn of the last century. Accessing the US Census through the Archive means I could track them as they moved from New Jersey to New York and back out to New Jersey. Morris is my grandfather. In the 1910 census he was six years old.

census form with Cohon names on it.

The Archive has a wealth of searchable and downloadable family history books many of which are unavailable elsewhere online.

Ten+ years of Matisyahu shows

Live at Red Rocks

Live at Red Rocks

For Hannukah or any time, Matisyahu’s hazzan-esque lyrical reggae rapping is a tonic for a hectic life. Even better to listen to (and easier to embed) with the newer version of the Archive’s site. I keep this on background when I answer Open Library emails and do other keyboard-intensive work. Thanks to Matisyahu for allowing the Archive to store and distribute his music as part of their extensive Live Music Archive.

Boooooooooks

Mole people!

Mole people!

Steam powered color printing!

Steam powered color printing!

Rolling along modern style

Rolling along modern style

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the BookReader was first released as a way for people to read books online using a book-like interface, it was way ahead of the curve. The online reading experience has improved elsewhere but the Archive is still one of the first places I go to find public domain content (books and magazines) to read, share, answer reference questions, or just use in my presentations. So many libraries in North and South America (or Canada specifically) and Africa have great collections at the Archive from the Biodiversity Heritage Library to New York Public Library to the US National Library of Medicine to 13,000 books in Arabic. Comics! Creepy magazines! Yearbooks! Encyclopedias and dictionaries!

And all of it is available for anyone, for free, whenever they want it.

Happy travels!

Happy travels!

Jessamyn West is a librarian and community technologist. She helps run the Internet Archive’s Open Library project and writes a column for Computers in Libraries magazine. She works with small libraries and businesses in Central Vermont to help them use technology to solve problems.

In-Library eBook Lending Program Expands to 1,000 Libraries

Internet Archive announces 1,000 Library Partners from 6 countries have joined to build and lend a pool of 100,000+ eBooks; Extending the Traditional In-Library Lending Model.

San Francisco, CA – Today, the Internet Archive announced that the 1,000th library from 6 countries has joined its In-Library eBook Lending Program. Led by the Internet Archive, patrons may borrow eBooks from a new, cooperative 100,000+ eBook lending collection of mostly 20th century books on OpenLibrary.org, a site where it’s already possible to read over 1 million eBooks without restriction. During a library visit, patrons with an OpenLibrary.org account can borrow any of these lendable eBooks using laptops, reading devices or library computers. This new twist on the traditional lending model could increase eBook use and revenue for publishers.

“As readers go digital, so are our libraries,” said Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive. “To grow from 150 great, forward-thinking libraries in Feb. 2011 to 1,000 libraries today, suggests that there is a true need for this type of program. We, as libraries,  want to buy eBooks to lend to our patrons.” (See the partial list of participating libraries below.)

This new digital lending system will enable patrons of participating libraries to read books in a web browser. “In Silicon Valley, iPads and other reading devices are hugely popular. Our partnership with the Internet Archive and OpenLibrary.org is crucial to achieving our mission — to meet the reading needs of our library visitors and our community,” said Linda Crowe, Executive Director of the Peninsula Library System.

A recent survey of libraries across North America was conducted by Unisphere Research and Information Today, Inc. (ITI). It reported that of the 1,201 libraries canvassed, 73% are seeing increased demand for digital resources with 67% reporting increased demand for wireless access and 62% seeing a surge in demand for web access.

American libraries spend $3-4 billion each year on publishers’ products. “I’m not suggesting we spend less, I am suggesting we spend smarter by buying and lending more eBooks,” asserted Kahle. He is also encouraging libraries worldwide to join in the expansion of this pool of purchased and digitized eBooks so their patrons can borrow from this larger collection.

How It Works
Any OpenLibrary.org account holder can borrow up to 5 eBooks at a time, for up to 2 weeks. Books can only be borrowed by one person at a time. People can choose to borrow either an in-browser version (viewed using the Internet Archive’s BookReader web application), or a PDF or ePub version, managed by the free Adobe Digital Editions software. This new technology follows the lead of the Google eBookstore, which sells books from many publishers to be read using Google’s books-in-browsers technology. Readers can use laptops, library computers and tablet devices, including the iPad.

What Participating Libraries Are Saying
The reasons for joining the initiative vary from library to library. Judy Russell, Dean of University Libraries at the University of Florida, said, “We have hundreds of books that are too brittle to circulate. This digitize-and-lend system allows us to provide access to these older books without endangering the physical copy.”

“Libraries are our allies in creating the best range of discovery mechanisms for writers and readers…”
Richard Nash
Founder of Cursor, Publisher

Digital lending also offers wider access to one-of-a-kind or rare books on specific topics such as family histories — popular with genealogists. This pooled collection will enable libraries like the Boston Public Library and the Allen County Public Library in Indiana to share their materials with genealogists around the state, the country and the world.

“Genealogists are some of our most enthusiastic users, and the Boston Public Library holds some genealogy books that exist nowhere else,” said Amy E. Ryan, President of the Boston Public Library. “This lending system allows our users to search for names in these books for the first time, and allows us to efficiently lend some of these books to visitors at distant libraries.”

“Reciprocal sharing of genealogy resources is crucial to family history research. The Allen County Public Library owns the largest public genealogy collection in the country, and we want to make our resources available to as many people as possible. Our partnership in this initiative offers us a chance to reach a wider audience,” said Jeffrey Krull, Director of the Allen County Public Library.

Publishers selling their eBooks to participating libraries include Cursor and OR Books. Books purchased will be lent to readers as well as being digitally preserved for the long-term. This continues the traditional relationship and services offered by publishers and libraries.

Jo Budler, Kansas State Librarian, comments, “Kansas librarians are very excited about offering this downloadable service to the residents of Kansas.  Historically Kansas librarians have been strong supporters of collaborative endeavors.  This project fits very nicely with projects undertaken in the past, and with the desire to continue to offer excellent customer service and new services into the future.”

“Creating digital structures that support access to content through public libraries is imperative. The Digital In-Library Lending project is a beginning. California is delighted to be involved a project that will create more online access to content for Californians” said Californian State Librarian Stacey Aldrich.

John Oakes, founder of OR Books, said, “We’re always on the lookout for innovative solutions to solve the conundrum of contemporary publishing, and we are excited to learn about the Internet Archive’s latest project. For us, it’s a way to extend our reach to the crucial library market. We look forward to the results.”

For More Information
Here are some eBooks that are only available to people in participating libraries.
Libraries interested in partnering in this program should contact: info@archive.org.
To use this service, please visit a participating library:

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List of Participating Libraries

Aboite Branch Library, Allen County Public Library

Dupont Branch Library, Allen County Public Library

Georgetown Branch Library, Allen County Public Library

Grabill Branch Library, Allen County Public Library

Hessen Cassel Branch Library, Allen County Public Library

Little Turtle Branch Library, Allen County Public Library

Main Library, Allen County Public Library

Monroeville Branch Library, Allen County Public Library

New Haven Branch Library, Allen County Public Library

Pontiac Branch Library, Allen County Public Library

Shawnee Branch Library, Allen County Public Library

Tecumseh Branch Library, Allen County Public Library

Waynedale Branch Library, Allen County Public Library

Woodburn Branch Library, Allen County Public Library

Adams Street Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Brighton Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Charlestown Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Codman Square Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Connolly Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Dudley Branch Library, Boston Public Library

East Boston Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Egleston Square Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Faneuil Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Fields Corner Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Grove Hall Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Honan-Allston Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Hyde Park Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Jamaica Plain Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Lower Mills Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Mattapan Branch Library, Boston Public Library

North End Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Orient Heights Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Parker Hill Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Roslindale Branch Library, Boston Public Library

South Boston Branch Library, Boston Public Library

South End Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Uphams Corner Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Washington Village Branch Library, Boston Public Library

West End Branch Library, Boston Public Library

West Roxbury Branch Library, Boston Public Library

Internet Archive

MBLWHOI Library, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Atherton Library, Atherton, California

Bay Shore Library, Daly City, California

Belmont Library, Belmont, California

Brisbane Library, Brisbane, California

Burlingame Public Library, Burlingame, California

Burlingame Library Easton Branch, Burlingame, California

Cañada College Library, Redwood City, California

College of San Mateo Library, San Mateo, California

East Palo Alto Library, East Palo Alto, California

Fair Oaks Library, Redwood City, California

Foster City Library, Foster City, California

Grand Avenue Branch Library, South San Francisco, California

Half Moon Bay Library, Half Moon Bay, California

Hillsdale Branch Library, San Mateo, California

John Daly Library, Daly City, California

Marina Public Library, San Mateo, California

Menlo Park Library, Menlo Park, California

Menlo Park Library Belle Haven Branch, Menlo Park, California

Millbrae Library, Millbrae, California

Pacifica Sanchez Library, Pacifica, California

Pacifica Sharp Park Library, Pacifica, California

Portola Valley Library, Portola Valley, California

Redwood City Public Library, Redwood City, California

Redwood Shores Branch Library, Redwood City, California

San Bruno Library, San Bruno, California

San Carlos Library, San Carlos, California

San Mateo Public Library, San Mateo, California

Schaberg Library, Redwood City, California

Serramonte Main Library, Daly City, California

Skyline College Library, San Bruno, California

South San Francisco Public Library, South San Francisco, California

Westlake Library, Daly City, California

Woodside Library, Woodside, California

Anza Branch, San Francisco Public Library

Bayview/Anna E. Waden Branch, San Francisco Public Library

Bernal Heights, San Francisco Public Library

Chinatown/Him Mark Lai Branch, San Francisco Public Library

Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial Branch, San Francisco Public Library

Excelsior, San Francisco Public Library

Glen Park Branch, San Francisco Public Library

Golden Gate Valley Branch, San Francisco Public Library

Ingleside Branch, San Francisco Public Library

San Francisco Public Library, Main

Marina, San Francisco Public Library

Merced Branch Library, San Francisco Public Library

Mission, San Francisco Public Library

Mission Bay, San Francisco Public Library

Noe Valley/Sally Brunn Branch, San Francisco Public Library

North Beach Branch, San Francisco Public Library

Ocean View, San Francisco Public Library

Ortega, San Francisco Public Library

Park Branch, San Francisco Public Library

Parkside, San Francisco Public Library

Portola Branch, San Francisco Public Library

Potrero Branch, San Francisco Public Library

Presidio Branch, San Francisco Public Library

Richmond/Senator Milton Marks Branch, San Francisco Public Library

Sunset, San Francisco Public Library

Visitacion Valley, San Francisco Public Library

West Portal, San Francisco Public Library

Western Addition, San Francisco Public Library

The Urban School of San Francisco

Augustana Campus Library, University of Alberta

Bibliothèque Saint-Jean (BSJ), University of Alberta

Cameron Library, University of Alberta

Herbert T. Coutts (Education & Physical Education) Library, University of Alberta

Rutherford Library, University of Alberta

John A. Weir Memorial Law Library, University of Alberta

John W. Scott Health Sciences Library, University of Alberta

Winspear Business Reference Library, University of Alberta

Architecture and Fine Arts Library, University of Florida

Education Library, University of Florida

Health Science Center Library, University of Florida

Borland Library, University of Florida

Veterinary Medicine Reading Room, University of Florida

Allen H. Neuharth Journalism and Communications Library, University of Florida

Library West, University of Florida

Marston Science Library, University of Florida

Mead Library, University of Florida

Music Library, University of Florida

Smathers Library (East), University of Florida

Robarts Library, University of Toronto

Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto

Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria University

E J Pratt Library, Victoria University

Emmanuel College Library, Victoria University