Category Archives: Books Archive

Author Shares Mentoring Expertise Through Controlled Digital Lending

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Rik Nemanick believes in the power of mentoring in the workplace. As an author, corporate consultant, and university instructor, he explains to business leaders and students how a mentor can bring the best out in others.

The Mentor’s Way: Eight Rules for Bringing Out the Best in Others by Rik Nemanick, now available for borrowing through Controlled Digital Lending.

“A mentor is different from a teacher who imparts knowledge,” Nemanick says. “A good mentor broadens someone’s perspective and opens doors. It’s about challenging someone’s thinking and creating a relationship.”

Over the years, the St. Louis businessman was urged to put his leadership development research and expertise into a book. Published in 2016 by Routledge, The Mentor’s Way: Eight Rules for Bringing Out the Best in Others, is now available for lending through the Internet Archive.

“I want my message out there. I saw the Internet Archive as a way to make it more available to more people,” Nemanick says of his recent donation to the Controlled Digital Lending program. “The book sitting on Amazon or a shelf doesn’t get anyone engaged as much as if it’s available at the library.”

One of the first things that Nemanick says he did when the book was published was to donate a copy to Washington University Library in St. Louis. He wanted it available for students in his executive education graduate courses in leadership, mentoring, and human resource metrics so they could learn the concepts he advocates.

Author and mentoring consultant Rik Nemanick

Through his work, Nemanick says he wants to challenge the way people think about mentoring and offer practical ideas. Often people enter their careers with certain, narrow expectations and a mentor can be critical with the workplace adjustment. “A mentor can help someone find their way in their profession,” he says. “My hope is that people can find their fit more easily with the information in my book.”

Nemanick says he does not worry about his book being hurt by library lending through Controlled Digital Lending.

“This is a respectful way to get your message heard. A fair number of authors just want people to read what they have written,” he says. “It’s just one more avenue to make sure it gets into people’s hands.”

Registration Is Now Open for the Library Leaders Forum

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Every October we host the Library Leaders Forum, which is traditionally a one-day workshop that brings together librarians, archivists, and information managers to learn about emerging technologies in libraries. Registration is now open for this year’s Forum, which will be entirely virtual. We hope you can join in and learn from a distance about new developments and projects at the Internet Archive, especially those relating to controlled digital lending.

The theme of this year’s Forum is “Empowering Libraries and Communities Through Digital Lending.” With library service impacted at global scale due to COVID-19, libraries have had to adjust their digital lending programs to meet the needs of the communities they serve. Join experts from the library, copyright, and information policy fields for a three-week virtual event exploring current digital lending strategies for libraries and the future of digital lending. Sessions will be held online October 6, 13, & 20.

October 6: Policy
10am-12pm PDT
Join leaders in the library copyright community & policy experts for a panel discussion on the future of digital lending and its value to libraries and the communities they serve.

October 13: Community
10am-12pm PDT
A community of practice has emerged around controlled digital lending. Learn from leaders who are developing next generation library tools that incorporate and build upon CDL.

October 20: Impact
10am-12pm PDT
Learn from libraries that have implemented controlled digital lending and hear from users about the impact the library practice has made for them.

Register now for each session, and also check out our pre-conference workshop “How Controlled Digital Lending Works for Libraries.”

Last year’s Forum was a rousing success! Read the recap.

Hope International University’s Journals Get New Digital Life

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In January, Robin Hartman learned major renovations planned at Hope International University in Fullerton, California, meant the library would have to give up 25 percent of its space. That forced Hartman, director of library services at the 2,000-student private university, to make some tough decisions.

Robin Hartman, Director of Library Services at Hope International University

What would she do with the back issues of periodicals now that there would be only six shelving sections to store the journals and magazines instead of 40? Hartman ended up keeping periodicals that were only available in print and less than 10 years old. That left her with volumes of older issues that she didn’t want to just throw in a dumpster.

Hartman contacted Internet Archive to give Hope’s vast collection of older periodicals a new digital life. Working from her home during the COVID-19 crisis this summer, she instructed the construction crew and student workers to box up the excess journals—191 boxes in all. Internet Archive arranged to provide pallets and plastic wrap to safely pack the periodicals. The boxes were loaded onto a semi-truck and transported to San Francisco for preservation at no expense to the university.

“When I found out Internet Archive was able to take the older periodicals that we couldn’t keep, I was really thrilled,” Hartman says. “I was able to tell my faculty they are not gone forever. They will be digitized eventually and made available online.”

The donation includes a range of popular magazines and academic journals linked to the Christian university’s majors such as: Clinical Psychology, Educational Leadership, Family and Society, Journal of American History, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Journal of Spirituality and Mental Health, Journal of Sports Management, and Pastoral Psychology.

“I feel much better that they are going to a good home. They are good, valid sources,” Hartman says.

Hartman is telling librarian colleagues about the donation in hopes of interesting others in adding to Internet Archive’s collection. Many libraries are being reconfigured to make room for tutoring or snack bars and are facing financial cuts in the wake of the pandemic. There is also a shift in preference for digital among students over print journals, notes Hartman, making libraries rethink their collections.

Loading boxes of donated journals at Hope International University to be preserved and digitized by Internet Archive.

“The periodicals will be more useful online,” says Hartman, who plans to continue donating materials to the Archive. “Resource sharing is important for libraries these days. Internet Archive was a great solution for us. I think Internet Archive is a way of sharing resources for the good of all the library communities.”

If your library is interested in donating print journals to Internet Archive for preservation and digitization, please learn more on the Donations page.

[Robin’s post about this donation]

Can You Help us Make the 19th Century Searchable?

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In 1847, Frederick Douglass started a newspaper advocating the abolition of slavery that ran until 1851.  After the Civil War, there was a newspaper for freed slaves, the Freedmen’s Record.  The Internet Archive is bringing these and many more works online for free public access. But there’s a problem: 

Our Optical Character Recognition (OCR), while the best commercially available OCR technology, is not very good at identifying text from older documents.  

Take for example, this newspaper from 1847. The images are not that great, but a person can read them:

The problem is  our computers’ optical character recognition tech gets it wrong, and the columns get confused.

What we need is “Culture Tech” (a riff on fintech, or biotech) and Culture Techies to work on important and useful projects–the things we need, but are probably not going to get gushers of private equity interest to fund. There are thousands of professionals taking on similar challenges in the field of digital humanities and we want to complement their work with industrial-scale tech that we can apply to cultural heritage materials.

One such project would be to work on technologies to bring 19th-century documents fully digital. We need to improve  OCR to enable full text search, but we also need help segmenting documents into columns and articles. The Internet Archive has lots of test materials and thousands are uploading more documents all the time.    

What we do not have is a good way to integrate work on these projects with the Internet Archive’s processing flow.  So we need help and ideas there as well.

Maybe we can host an “Archive Summer of CultureTech” or something…Just ideas.   Maybe working with a university department that would want to build programs and classes around Culture Tech… If you have ideas or skills to contribute, please post a comment here or send an email to info@archive.org with some of this information.

Small Publisher Embraces Controlled Digital Lending to Connect with New Readers 

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Anne McDonald and Jason C. McDonald of AJ Charleson Publishing LLC, and a selection of their books, which are now available for borrowing through controlled digital lending.

By Caralee Adams, freelance writer.

Jason C. McDonald wrote the first draft of his latest mystery using a manual typewriter.

“It forces you to think about the flow of writing in a different way than when you can’t easily erase something,” says the author and owner of AJ Charleson Publishing LLC. “It can take a story in a very unexpected — and great — direction.”

McDonald may be old school in his approach to crafting a novel, but he is innovative in how he is trying to connect with readers.

The Idaho writer has long been a fan of the Internet Archive and its vast amount of newspapers, magazines, and recordings for research. So when it came to getting exposure for his books, McDonald wanted to give back to the collection.

McDonald recently contributed three copies of books published by his small company that he formed in 2018 to the Internet Archive. A digital version of his books, Finding Scrooge and Noah Clue, P.I., along with a book, Love’s Refining Fire, by Anne McDonald, Jason’s mother, are now available through Controlled Digital Lending.  He shared the news of the free digital availability of his titles on Twitter and in a banner on the company website.

“I really support libraries and Internet Archive’s lending program is basically an international library. It spans borders,” says McDonald. “The whole purpose is to get these resources into the hands of people that need them in a way that is controlled — and it’s free.”

McDonald is a computer programmer by day and author who is chipping away on four manuscripts now on nights and weekends. He’s just getting started with his independent publishing company and would like to expand. Yet, it’s a struggle to get the word out about his print books. McDonald lists his titles in buyers’ catalogues, promotes them at book signings and relies on word of mouth marketing.

“Especially here in COVID era, we aren’t going to bookstores. People want to be able to read part of a book first to get an idea of what it’s like,” says McDonald. “Buying a print-only book sight unseen is an odd idea to some people.”

I think in the end, [Controlled Digital Lending] drives sales because you are finding readers you wouldn’t normally have. Those readers aren’t getting a copy that they keep forever — it’s a copy that’s going to lead them to want to own it.

Jason C. McDonald, author and publisher, AJ Charleson Publishing

The Archive also provides readers of its digitized online books a chance to easily purchase a copy through Better World Books, an affordable alternative to Amazon and an avenue to help amplify sales for less well-known authors. Having his works circulating digitally through the Internet Archive will give the public a chance to read part — or all — of his books and then make an informed decision about whether they want to buy it.

“It’s the same logic as with a library. It increases the visibility of a book,” McDonald says of CDL. “I think in the end, it drives sales because you are finding readers you wouldn’t normally have. Those readers aren’t getting a copy that they keep forever — it’s a copy that’s going to lead them to want to own it.”

Even More Impacts of the National Emergency Library and Controlled Digital Lending

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This is the third part in a series of testimonials from patrons who used the National Emergency Library and continue to use controlled digital lending to borrow books from our library (you can read the previous posts here and here). If you’d like to share your story of how you used the NEL while it was open, or how you are still using our lending library today, please leave a testimonial.

The following statements are condensed from testimonials sent to the Internet Archive:

Andrea N., Freehold, New Jersey, Reader: “I used the National Emergency Library for personal reading through the pandemic. I am a high-risk person for [COVID-19], so I have been very limited for the last three months.  I am also disabled and cannot easily visit the library even when it is open to check out books. I’ve relied on the Internet Archive for many years to find things to read to help me occupy my time when I can’t do much of anything else but read.  It was nice to have a wide selection of books to read during this time.”

Mirrah, Student

Mirrah, Sunderland, Massachusetts, Student: Mirrah writes that the National Emergency Library and controlled digital lending “allowed me to move ahead with my studies instead of getting stumped and trying to resort to irrelevant materials. Without Internet Archive, even my university’s library (that I’m paying tuition to access) is severely stunted in its online form.” Mirrah also encourages us to consider accessibility, writing, “I think people really underestimate the importance of accessibility in educational materials. It’s very difficult to understand the impact something you don’t have access to *could* have. Much easier to take for granted the things we already have access to, thinking it is so for everyone.”

Tom C., Omaha, Nebraska, Researcher: For Tom, the National Emergency Library was a source of entertainment. “It kept the isolation of a retiree by himself bearable, even fun sometimes. Keep on making obscure books available!”

Cindy Y., Toccoa, Georgia, Reader: Cindy used the National Emergency Library “as a replacement for Stephens County Public Library. It still has limited hours it is open.” As someone who reads for enjoyment, Cindy writes that the NEL “was a refreshing way to spend endless days at home. The entertainment was fabulous and an essential part of my life. From a young girl I enjoyed reading books like Trixie Belden mysteries to Pippi Longstocking adventures. I believe reading is essential to life. Remember the pack horse librarians and their service? Digital is ours. NEL is the pack horse librarian.” Editorial note: Learn more about the Pack Horse Library Project

Many of my students didn’t have access to some of their books when they were sent home for closure during COVID-19. I was able to find an edition of the main book needed and point students toward checking out the book. This was essential for my students who couldn’t afford to repurchase the book in a digital format.

Lauren K., Seattle, Washington, Educator

Tori K., Oxnard, California, Reader: “I read ancient history and religion books, which are not found in public libraries.” Tori is another reader that used the NEL for personal safety during quarantine and beyond. “The ability to read in the safety of my home is priceless because I have an autoimmune disease.”

Suvadip S., Researcher

Suvadip S., Durgapur, India, Researcher: Suvadip used the National Emergency Library to access materials that weren’t available to him in India. “I live in a small city in India. I couldn’t have afforded these books. Neither do we have such library facilities. It was like a boon for me in such difficult times. Please initiate NEL again during this difficult period.”

Karen T., Sacramento, California, Reader: Karen writes of the National Emergency Library, “It was a life saver. My local library, of which I am a regular patron, was closed and the selection of ebooks available online was limited. Being able to access the National Emergency Library made my stay at home more bearable.”

How Internet Archive and controlled digital lending can help course reserves this fall

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Webster Library’s Course Reserves Room, Concordia University by Librarianpam under CC BY-SA 4.0

I host regular webinars about the Internet Archive’s Open Libraries program, helping librarians and others understand how controlled digital lending works, and how their library can make their print collections available to users online. The question of how to safely handle course reserves is clearly among the top priorities for academic librarians as they approach fall semester, just a few short weeks away. At nearly every webinar session since early March, and certainly every session this summer, librarians have raised the question of how controlled digital lending can work for course reserves.  

We’re getting such a large number of inquiries on this topic that I thought it would be helpful to outline how Internet Archive’s Open Libraries program and controlled digital lending can help your library with course reserves this fall, and where we may have limitations in supporting your full suite of needs.

What are course reserves?

Course reserves are books & other materials that instructors and students need for particular courses. Materials are requested to be put “on reserve” by the instructor. The library sources those materials and either provides digital access (born digital or scanned) or physical access to the items. 

  • If physical, the library holds a copy behind the circulation desk or in a special room (like the beautiful Course Reserves room in Webster Library at Concordia University, above), and students check out & read the book for a limited period of time. After that time expires, the work is returned and made available for the next student.
  • If digital, the item goes into the library’s e-reserves system and/or the course learning management system, such as Google Classroom, Blackboard, or Canvas, where it can be accessed by students enrolled in the class.

What’s the challenge with course reserves this fall?

Academic libraries have remained open and operational throughout COVID-19 closures, many working with limited-to-no onsite staff.  Their operations were already digital, but distance learning and health and safety issues related to lending physical materials have put a renewed emphasis on digital delivery for fall semester.  As libraries work to meet the needs of students and faculty returning to instruction this fall—either in person, online, or hybrid models—the demand for new ways of managing and serving course reserves is significant.

How can Internet Archive help?

  • Our lending library of 1.5M digitized books is available to your patrons right now.  Our books are available to borrow by anyone with an email address and an internet connection, with a simple signup form.
  • By default our books circulate for one hour, following the usage pattern of our own users and HathiTrust’s Emergency Temporary Access Service. When we have additional copies, books can also be checked out for 14 days.
  • If your library joins the Open Libraries program, we can process your course reserves list (either in MARC format or just a list of ISBNs) and give you back links to the books we’ve already digitized. You can incorporate those links back into your catalog, course reserves system, or learning management system.
    • To be clear, you don’t have to join the program to access our books. Anyone can link to our books right now. If you join, we’ll analyze your records for matches and give you back links. You can also opt to put one copy of your matched books into controlled digital lending so that we have an additional copy to lend, but again, that’s not required.
  • If we don’t have a book you need, you can help bump it up higher in our acquisition wish list by completing this Course Reserves request form, which will ask you to submit the book’s ISBN, title, author, year published, and anticipated # students in the course.
  • If you have a book that we don’t have, and you want to make it available to users to check out online through controlled digital lending, we can work with you to upload your book into our CDL environment. Please read our program limitations below, and reach out to learn more.

Limitations

Internet Archive’s controlled digital lending service is not a perfect match for all course reserve scenarios. You should consider the following program limitations as you plan for fall semester:

  • Your patrons will have to create an account at archive.org to check out books. We don’t connect to eduroam or Shibboleth for single-sign on. (If you’re interested in helping us implement and integrate a Shibboleth connection let us know.) 
  • You can’t limit users for a particular book to students at your school or students in a particular course. We lend to anyone with an archive.org account.
  • We don’t have a calendaring and notification system for one hour loans. Our one hour borrows are first come, first served. We do have waitlists and a notification system for 14 day loans.
  • Books added to CDL or requested to be added to CDL must be published in 2015 or earlier. If you have special needs for accessible texts for more recent books, please reach out.

We understand that our implementation of CDL won’t work for every course reserves use case. We offer our collection to assist libraries and schools in connecting students with books this fall semester. We are guided by our library’s mission to provide “universal access to all knowledge,” especially as library service and educational systems are disrupted due to COVID-19. If you have additional questions about how we can help that are not addressed here, please reach out.

Libraries lend books, and must continue to lend books: Internet Archive responds to publishers’ lawsuit

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Yesterday, the Internet Archive filed our response to the lawsuit brought by four commercial publishers to end the practice of Controlled Digital Lending (CDL), the digital equivalent of traditional library lending. CDL is a respectful and secure way to bring the breadth of our library collections to digital learners. Commercial ebooks, while useful, only cover a small fraction of the books in our libraries. As we launch into a fall semester that is largely remote, we must offer our students the best information to learn from—collections that were purchased over centuries and are now being digitized. What is at stake with this lawsuit? Every digital learner’s access to library books. That is why the Internet Archive is standing up to defend the rights of  hundreds of libraries that are using Controlled Digital Lending.

The publishers’ lawsuit aims to stop the longstanding and widespread library practice of Controlled Digital Lending, and stop the hundreds of libraries using this system from providing their patrons with digital books. Through CDL, libraries lend a digitized version of the physical books they have acquired as long as the physical copy doesn’t circulate and the digital files are protected from redistribution. This is how Internet Archive’s lending library works, and has for more than nine years. Publishers are seeking to shut this library down, claiming copyright law does not allow it. Our response is simple: Copyright law does not stand in the way of libraries’ rights to own books, to digitize their books, and to lend those books to patrons in a controlled way.  

What is at stake with this lawsuit? Every digital learner’s access to library books. That is why the Internet Archive is standing up to defend the rights of  hundreds of libraries that are using Controlled Digital Lending.

“The Authors Alliance has several thousand members around the world and we have endorsed the Controlled Digital Lending as a fair use,” stated Pamela Samuelson, Authors Alliance founder and Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law at Berkeley Law. “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…I think that the idea that lending a book is illegal is just wrong.”

These publishers clearly intend this lawsuit to have a chilling effect on Controlled Digital Lending at a moment in time when it can benefit digital learners the most. For students and educators, the 2020 fall semester will be unlike any other in recent history. From K-12 schools to universities, many institutions have already announced they will keep campuses closed or severely limit access to communal spaces and materials such as books because of public health concerns. The conversation we must be having is: how will those students, instructors and researchers access information — from textbooks to primary sources? Unfortunately, four of the world’s largest book publishers seem intent on undermining both libraries’ missions and our attempts to keep educational systems operational during a global health crisis.

Ten percent of the world’s population experience disabilities that impact their ability to read. For these learners, digital books are a lifeline. The publishers’ lawsuit against the Internet Archive calls for the destruction of more than a million digitized books.

The publishers’ lawsuit does not stop at seeking to end the practice of Controlled Digital Lending. These publishers call for the destruction of the 1.5 million digital books that Internet Archive makes available to our patrons. This form of digital book burning is unprecedented and unfairly disadvantages people with print disabilities. For the blind, ebooks are a lifeline, yet less than one in ten exists in accessible formats. Since 2010, Internet Archive has made our lending library available to the blind and print disabled community, in addition to sighted users. If the publishers are successful with their lawsuit, more than a million of those books would be deleted from the Internet’s digital shelves forever.

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.

Digital Fluency is Key to Learning this Fall and Beyond

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By Matt Poland, educational specialist

There’s little doubt that both learning and work require a high degree of technology use. As schooling continues to move online in response to COVID-19, students are expected to be able to access, process, manipulate, and interpret digital content. This has brought to light a significant skill that separates successful learners from those who struggle: digital fluency. Digital fluency is a step above “digital literacy.” Learners now need to know much more than just the basics of navigating the internet, writing an email, and making their way around common productivity applications like spreadsheets. Digital fluency includes skills such as using technology tools for collaboration, marshaling online resources to solve a problem, and evaluating the accuracy of a source.

Despite the “whiz-kid” reputation of Generation Z, an alarming number of high school students lack the appropriate level of digital fluency. This set of skills is part of a larger group of key work and learning aptitudes called 21st Century Skills. A lack of digital fluency can harm students’ futures as they progress into college and careers where these skills are necessary.

Students and teachers can use Internet Archive as a collaborative tool for sharing books and digital content across remote teams or classrooms, removing the physical barriers of access to books and collaborators.

Fortunately, having students complete assignments with the aid of the Internet Archive’s digital library can help build digital fluency. Students and teachers can use Internet Archive as a collaborative tool for sharing books and digital content across remote teams or classrooms, removing the physical barriers of access to books and collaborators. They can use digital libraries like Internet Archive to conduct research for assignments, with access to 20th-century texts that aren’t available from other sources. Finally, they can cross-reference sources to evaluate the accuracy of material they may find elsewhere on the internet.

Other features of Internet Archive’s digital library promote digital fluency for students as well. For example, the site includes advanced search and sorting features that are commonly used on research websites. It is critical for students to understand how to use the right keywords to find what they need, as well as how to find the most recent (or oldest) material, particular authors or publications, etc. On Internet Archive, this can be done from the advanced search options in the left toolbar. Sorting by the number of views, title, date published or the creator is available by clicking the appropriate header at the top of the search results. Even when you have the material you are looking for, you need to know how to find the specific content within it. You can do this at Internet Archive by using the search box in the upper right corner when a particular book is open on the screen.

Nearly a quarter of the way into the 21st century, learning is changing rapidly and digital fluency is becoming increasingly important for students. Tools such as Internet Archive’s digital library can help students develop these skills through activities like team collaboration, online research, and verifying sources. With multiple features that support learning in the classroom or remotely, teachers and students should consider Internet Archive a valuable resource for their work and learning.

Matt Poland is founder of MAP Consulting, an educational consulting firm specializing in workforce development.

Digital Librarians – Now More Essential Than Ever

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By Michelle Swanson, an Oregon-based educator and educational consultant

It’s time to consider adding another occupation to the growing list of pandemic-era “essential workers”: Digital Librarian.

With public library buildings closed due to the global pandemic, teachers, students, and lovers of books everywhere have increasingly turned to online resources for access to information. But as anyone who has ever turned up 2.3 million (mostly unrelated) results from a Google search knows, skillfully navigating the Internet is not as easy as it seems. This is especially true when conducting serious research that requires finding and reviewing older books, journals and other sources that may be out of print or otherwise inaccessible.

Enter the role of digital librarian. 

The role is not really new—librarians have been going digital for years. School and university librarians are typically early adopters of technology, tasked with training the teachers they serve. In the public high school where I taught during the 1990s, the library was home to the school’s first open-access computers, printers, and computer lab. Our librarian, like countless other school librarians across the nation, was the go-to source for answers to thorny technical questions. By the year 2000, the notion of a digital librarian was already well established in library science literature as a type of information professional who manages and organizes digital resources, provides functionality for information and electronic information services, and remotely mediates between users and resources. 

Using Internet Archive, librarians who oversee physical libraries shuttered during the current pandemic can supplement their digital offerings with a massive digital library of over four million books, including many out-of-print titles from the 20th century. Anyone with an email address can borrow books from the Internet Archive for free. 

Like other digital librarians, the staff at Internet Archive recognize that curation is important for users to get the most out of the collection. For educators, the library makes it easy to find resources by offering lists categorized by subject, author, reading level, grade level, and year published. In addition, advanced search functions are available to further sort the library’s holdings, including tools that let users search the collection for specific text phrases. Schools that want to fully unlock the potential of Internet Archive’s digital books should have school librarians and classroom teachers explore strategies for incorporating this resource into their distance learning plans.

While digital libraries can’t fully replace the important social and civic role that physical library buildings play in our communities, they do provide a critical service to educators and learners in this time of global need. And guiding learners through these online learning landscapes are our essential guides: the digital librarians.