21 ms·

Books from 1923 to 1941 Now Liberated

301 points by jonah-archive 9y ago

walterbell 9y ago
> Now it is the chance for libraries and citizens who have been reticent to scan works beyond 1923, to push forward to 1941, and the Internet Archive will host them. If individuals have private scans of rare books (1923 - 1941), how should these scans be delivered to Internet Archive for hosting? Does "not being sold" mean out of print? Used, out-of-print books may still be sold. In fact, that's sometimes the only way to find a (possibly very expensive) copy for scanning and preservation.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  You can upload them here: https://archive.org/upload/ https://archive.org/upload/ (account required; free to create) and then send an email to the Internet Archive staff with the item identifier to have it added to Open Library. If you don't mind shipping them the book(s): Internet Archive, Attn: Book Donations, 300 Funston Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94118 If you have a large donation of books, please call first to make arrangements: (415) 561-6767
  - jonah-archive 9y ago
    For the interested, we also have a Python library for uploading/searching/etc: http://internetarchive.readthedocs.io http://internetarchive.readthedocs.io
- chameleonSkin 9y ago
  From the text of the law: "(2) No reproduction, distribution, display, or performance is authorized under this subsection if— (A) the work is subject to normal commercial exploitation; (B) a copy or phonorecord of the work can be obtained at a reasonable price" I'd imagine that "normal commercial exploitation" would generally mean an item that is currently in print, although I could see other theoretical cases this would cover (for example, the work is not technically being printed anymore but there is a huge stock of existing volumes on the market). I don't think reselling rare volumes would fall under this category - that could be "commercial exploitation", but certainly not "normal".
matt_wulfeck 9y ago
Despite their age, many of these books are still extremely readable even by young readers. I thumbed through Frog: the horse that couldn’t be tamed and really enjoyed it. The hand-drawn pictures in the book are also very readable and cool in a retro way. Makes me sad about the current quality of our children’s literature.
- gertef 9y ago
  There is high-quality current literature today, and there was low-quality literature then.
  - kronos29296 9y ago
    This may be because there is so much low quality stuff everywhere while only the good and high quality ones survived from the past (Survival of the fittest I guess). So the past looks like it was all good but the present is mostly rubbish.
- DanBC 9y ago
  > Makes me sad about the current quality of our children’s literature. there are thousands of excellent books for children now, some with exquisite illustration. Here's a twitter hashtag with some good examples: https://twitter.com/hashtag/favekidsbookart?src=hash https://twitter.com/hashtag/favekidsbookart?src=hash The UK has a prize for excellent illustration - the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal. http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway.php http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway.php Here's the 2017 shortlist: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway-current-shortlist.php http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway-current-shortl... Previous winners are listed here: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/archive.php http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/archive.php
Aloha 9y ago
I wish this was extended to all stuff under copyright - I think this could do great things in eliminating the abandoned works problem (in my opinion the largest issue of our current copyright regime).
- walterbell 9y ago
  Anyone know what happened to the 2015 Orphan Works proposal by the US Copyright Office? https://www.copyright.gov/orphan/reports/orphan-works2015.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/orphan/reports/orphan-works2015.pd...
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Basically, a lot of opposition--and not by the people you might assume. Disney doesn't care; they're not going to let their copyrights lapse by accident. But a number of organizations that represent individual content creators, such as photographers, are concerned that upon lapse of copyright, large companies will make a minimal effort to contact the copyright holder or estate, call it a day, and then profit from the work.
orblivion 9y ago
Does someone know the difference between what archive.org will take and what Gutenberg will take? It seems like they should just coalesce into one data set, right? I imagine archive.org can easily fit the Gutenberg data set; you can reasonably get it yourself via Kiwix.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Archive.org can take and provide works that are still under copyright due to library provisions in the DMCA. Project Gutenberg only provides public domain works, but on a per country basis: https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_FAQ#Copyright https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_FAQ#Copyr... (some works are in the public domain in Australia, but not yet in the US, for example)
  - ghaff 9y ago
    There are basically no library exceptions for digital content. It’s more ask forgiveness rather than permission.
  - orblivion 9y ago
    > library provisions in the DMCA There's stuff about archive.org I still don't quite understand. So they use legal hacks to host all the stuff they do? They're legally a library or something?
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      The Internet Archive is fully compliant with the DMCA's safe harbor provisions; in the event an item is reported by a copyright owner, it will no longer be served to the public (but it will remain in storage until a later date).
      - vog 9y ago
        Wow. This is a really, really clever hack around this flawed copyright system!
komali2 9y ago
I'm ambivalent about all the weirdness about digital books. On the one hand, I kinda get why San Francisco Public Library has to "pretend" it can only loan out 20 "digital copies" of "The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck" at a time, because I guess if you could just instantly use the Libby app to throw it on your kindle and renew endlessly, why would anybody ever buy a book? Still, it is "fake" prohibitions. There's literally nothing but arbitrary law and DRM preventing the free distribution of an already-digitized volume. I really hope I get to live long enough to see society have to tackle the "oh fuck, currency as a concept is useless" problem, aka the steps leading up to post-scarcity. Highly highly unlikely, but I hope for it nonetheless. At the very least I'll get to see the "oh fuck what do we do with all these truck drivers" problem get tackled, probably.
- jdmichal 9y ago
  > I really hope I get to live long enough to see society have to tackle the "oh fuck, currency as a concept is useless" problem, aka the steps leading up to post-scarcity. I would only want to see that if we were already post-scarcity. Otherwise, there's going to be a lot of bloodshed as people figure it out and realize they don't have any way to continue buying the things they require to live. Post-scarcity is great, but I fear the road that leads to it.
  - lotyrin 9y ago
    Globally, we are pretty much post-scarce on anything anyone "requires to live". The struggle will be to find out how all the rest gets divided when controlling distribution of the right to live is no longer a bargaining position and discovering if we can still provide for everyone without servitude.
    - Jesus_Jones 9y ago
      There are plenty of poor places with people starving, even though we have enough food to give it to people. But even in the usa, there are people who don't get enough to eat. in Seattle I often see news stories about the food bank.
sitkack 9y ago
> Sonny Bono Memorial Collection Heh.
- walterbell 9y ago
  Nicely recursive branding.
  - sitkack 9y ago
    All those books were printed on dead trees.
- Rebelgecko 9y ago
  Although the article's claim that he represented part of Los Angeles in Congress is kind of a stretch (unless they're being snidely metaphorical and it went over my head)
  - hinkley 9y ago
    Sonny Bono was the Representative for District 44. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_44th_congressional_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_44th_congressio... He was referred to in some circles as "The Representative from Disney".
    - Gargoyle 9y ago
      That's the current 44th. When he was in congress, the 44th was more Inland Empire than Los Angeles. "The district encompasses eastern Riverside County, including the sprawling suburb of Moreno Valley, the agricultural fields of the Coachella Valley and such cloistered country club communities as Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage." Of course, being a former recording and tv star, he had a number of ties to Hollywood.
      - hinkley 9y ago
        I wondered about redistributing. Wonder if the author made the same mistake.
c3534l 9y ago
What are some of the highlights for these newly available works? Anything good?
Stratoscope 9y ago
Just a reminder for anyone who values the Internet Archive as much as I do: it's easy to set up an automatic monthly donation. If IA were a SaaS, they could easily charge more than my modest contribution and I would gladly pay it. If you only know IA from the Wayback Machine, take a look at the other things they offer and you will find something of interest. I was delighted recently to find that they had digitized my BYTE Magazine articles from the '80s! Of more general interest, IA has the entire Prelinger Archives, including all the wonderful Jam Handy films and A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire: https://archive.org/details/TripDownMarketStreetrBeforeTheFire https://archive.org/details/TripDownMarketStreetrBeforeTheFi... If you previously saw the original version with the ending that is out of frame sync, this one is cleaned up so you can watch it from beginning to end. Look for the gentleman with the windblown beard when they stop at the Ferry Building.
- KGIII 9y ago
  Another enjoyable site: https://textfiles.com/ https://textfiles.com/ I've donated to support specific projects there. I should probably set up something regular. Jason does great things.
userbinator 9y ago
Hundreds of thousands of books can now be liberated. Let’s bring the 20th century to 21st-century citizens. Everyone, rev your cameras! If this was 10 years ago, they would be talking about scanners --- this brings me back to the days when P2P filesharing was absolutely blooming, and people would freely scan and share in various forums ("bookz scene") the books they had either bought or borrowed. The average camera of the time was far less capable than ones today, so digitisations made with one were of lower quality than scans, and in the jargon they were known as "cams" - borrowing the term from the film piracy scene. Nonetheless, everyone mostly appreciated someone "camming" a book, especially if it was particularly rare or difficult to scan. But over time, cameras improved significantly in quality and their speed was unrivaled, so they gradually replaced scanning --- especially with the friendly competition that tended to happen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14830212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14830212 Seeing that we can now again be doing this completely legally and openly to older books, makes me tremendously happy. Nonetheless, I don't think it can completely replace that sense of adventure and thrill of risk involved in participating in a scanparty a decade ago.
- KGIII 9y ago
  As I recall, someone had built a machine that turned the pages and took pictures of the pages. I think they were refining it, as it just snapped both facing pages at once, and were going to market it. I never did find out what happened to that project. The work was being shared in one of the alt.bin. newsgroups and they had written a few blurbs about their machine. This predates the popularity of crowdfunding, I don't know if that would have helped. I do seem to recall them mentioning some interest from libraries or archival services but I have no idea what happened. Maybe someone here knows the rest of the story? I do have some older manuscripts, including some old mathematics works. I should see if there is a project to digitize them. I'd be happy with digital copies as I don't have a material attachment to the books themselves - I don't think. (I may, I've never really been faced with sending them out to someone.) So, I'd be not too incensed if the process was destructive or if the books weren't returned.
  - polm23 9y ago
shmerl 9y ago
Copyright really needs a reform, with rolling back the term from the current insane length to something reasonable.

301 points by jonah-archive 9y ago

> Now it is the chance for libraries and citizens who have been reticent to scan works beyond 1923, to push forward to 1941, and the Internet Archive will host them. If individuals have private scans of rare books (1923 - 1941), how should these scans be delivered to Internet Archive for hosting? Does "not being sold" mean out of print? Used, out-of-print books may still be sold. In fact, that's sometimes the only way to find a (possibly very expensive) copy for scanning and preservation.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
You can upload them here: https://archive.org/upload/ https://archive.org/upload/ (account required; free to create) and then send an email to the Internet Archive staff with the item identifier to have it added to Open Library. If you don't mind shipping them the book(s): Internet Archive, Attn: Book Donations, 300 Funston Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94118 If you have a large donation of books, please call first to make arrangements: (415) 561-6767
- jonah-archive 9y ago
  For the interested, we also have a Python library for uploading/searching/etc: http://internetarchive.readthedocs.io http://internetarchive.readthedocs.io
chameleonSkin 9y ago
From the text of the law: "(2) No reproduction, distribution, display, or performance is authorized under this subsection if— (A) the work is subject to normal commercial exploitation; (B) a copy or phonorecord of the work can be obtained at a reasonable price" I'd imagine that "normal commercial exploitation" would generally mean an item that is currently in print, although I could see other theoretical cases this would cover (for example, the work is not technically being printed anymore but there is a huge stock of existing volumes on the market). I don't think reselling rare volumes would fall under this category - that could be "commercial exploitation", but certainly not "normal".

matt_wulfeck 9y ago

Despite their age, many of these books are still extremely readable even by young readers. I thumbed through Frog: the horse that couldn’t be tamed and really enjoyed it. The hand-drawn pictures in the book are also very readable and cool in a retro way. Makes me sad about the current quality of our children’s literature.

gertef 9y ago
There is high-quality current literature today, and there was low-quality literature then.
- kronos29296 9y ago
  This may be because there is so much low quality stuff everywhere while only the good and high quality ones survived from the past (Survival of the fittest I guess). So the past looks like it was all good but the present is mostly rubbish.
DanBC 9y ago
> Makes me sad about the current quality of our children’s literature. there are thousands of excellent books for children now, some with exquisite illustration. Here's a twitter hashtag with some good examples: https://twitter.com/hashtag/favekidsbookart?src=hash https://twitter.com/hashtag/favekidsbookart?src=hash The UK has a prize for excellent illustration - the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal. http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway.php http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway.php Here's the 2017 shortlist: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway-current-shortlist.php http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway-current-shortl... Previous winners are listed here: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/archive.php http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/archive.php

Aloha 9y ago

I wish this was extended to all stuff under copyright - I think this could do great things in eliminating the abandoned works problem (in my opinion the largest issue of our current copyright regime).

walterbell 9y ago
Anyone know what happened to the 2015 Orphan Works proposal by the US Copyright Office? https://www.copyright.gov/orphan/reports/orphan-works2015.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/orphan/reports/orphan-works2015.pd...
- ghaff 9y ago
  Basically, a lot of opposition--and not by the people you might assume. Disney doesn't care; they're not going to let their copyrights lapse by accident. But a number of organizations that represent individual content creators, such as photographers, are concerned that upon lapse of copyright, large companies will make a minimal effort to contact the copyright holder or estate, call it a day, and then profit from the work.

orblivion 9y ago

Does someone know the difference between what archive.org will take and what Gutenberg will take? It seems like they should just coalesce into one data set, right? I imagine archive.org can easily fit the Gutenberg data set; you can reasonably get it yourself via Kiwix.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Archive.org can take and provide works that are still under copyright due to library provisions in the DMCA. Project Gutenberg only provides public domain works, but on a per country basis: https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_FAQ#Copyright https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Copyright_FAQ#Copyr... (some works are in the public domain in Australia, but not yet in the US, for example)
- ghaff 9y ago
  There are basically no library exceptions for digital content. It’s more ask forgiveness rather than permission.
- orblivion 9y ago
  > library provisions in the DMCA There's stuff about archive.org I still don't quite understand. So they use legal hacks to host all the stuff they do? They're legally a library or something?
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    The Internet Archive is fully compliant with the DMCA's safe harbor provisions; in the event an item is reported by a copyright owner, it will no longer be served to the public (but it will remain in storage until a later date).
    - vog 9y ago
      Wow. This is a really, really clever hack around this flawed copyright system!

komali2 9y ago

I'm ambivalent about all the weirdness about digital books. On the one hand, I kinda get why San Francisco Public Library has to "pretend" it can only loan out 20 "digital copies" of "The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck" at a time, because I guess if you could just instantly use the Libby app to throw it on your kindle and renew endlessly, why would anybody ever buy a book? Still, it is "fake" prohibitions. There's literally nothing but arbitrary law and DRM preventing the free distribution of an already-digitized volume. I really hope I get to live long enough to see society have to tackle the "oh fuck, currency as a concept is useless" problem, aka the steps leading up to post-scarcity. Highly highly unlikely, but I hope for it nonetheless. At the very least I'll get to see the "oh fuck what do we do with all these truck drivers" problem get tackled, probably.

jdmichal 9y ago
> I really hope I get to live long enough to see society have to tackle the "oh fuck, currency as a concept is useless" problem, aka the steps leading up to post-scarcity. I would only want to see that if we were already post-scarcity. Otherwise, there's going to be a lot of bloodshed as people figure it out and realize they don't have any way to continue buying the things they require to live. Post-scarcity is great, but I fear the road that leads to it.
- lotyrin 9y ago
  Globally, we are pretty much post-scarce on anything anyone "requires to live". The struggle will be to find out how all the rest gets divided when controlling distribution of the right to live is no longer a bargaining position and discovering if we can still provide for everyone without servitude.
  - Jesus_Jones 9y ago
    There are plenty of poor places with people starving, even though we have enough food to give it to people. But even in the usa, there are people who don't get enough to eat. in Seattle I often see news stories about the food bank.

sitkack 9y ago

> Sonny Bono Memorial Collection Heh.

walterbell 9y ago
Nicely recursive branding.
- sitkack 9y ago
  All those books were printed on dead trees.
Rebelgecko 9y ago
Although the article's claim that he represented part of Los Angeles in Congress is kind of a stretch (unless they're being snidely metaphorical and it went over my head)
- hinkley 9y ago
  Sonny Bono was the Representative for District 44. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_44th_congressional_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California%27s_44th_congressio... He was referred to in some circles as "The Representative from Disney".
  - Gargoyle 9y ago
    That's the current 44th. When he was in congress, the 44th was more Inland Empire than Los Angeles. "The district encompasses eastern Riverside County, including the sprawling suburb of Moreno Valley, the agricultural fields of the Coachella Valley and such cloistered country club communities as Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage." Of course, being a former recording and tv star, he had a number of ties to Hollywood.
    - hinkley 9y ago
      I wondered about redistributing. Wonder if the author made the same mistake.

c3534l 9y ago

What are some of the highlights for these newly available works? Anything good?

Stratoscope 9y ago

Just a reminder for anyone who values the Internet Archive as much as I do: it's easy to set up an automatic monthly donation. If IA were a SaaS, they could easily charge more than my modest contribution and I would gladly pay it. If you only know IA from the Wayback Machine, take a look at the other things they offer and you will find something of interest. I was delighted recently to find that they had digitized my BYTE Magazine articles from the '80s! Of more general interest, IA has the entire Prelinger Archives, including all the wonderful Jam Handy films and A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire: https://archive.org/details/TripDownMarketStreetrBeforeTheFire https://archive.org/details/TripDownMarketStreetrBeforeTheFi... If you previously saw the original version with the ending that is out of frame sync, this one is cleaned up so you can watch it from beginning to end. Look for the gentleman with the windblown beard when they stop at the Ferry Building.

KGIII 9y ago
Another enjoyable site: https://textfiles.com/ https://textfiles.com/ I've donated to support specific projects there. I should probably set up something regular. Jason does great things.

userbinator 9y ago

Hundreds of thousands of books can now be liberated. Let’s bring the 20th century to 21st-century citizens. Everyone, rev your cameras! If this was 10 years ago, they would be talking about scanners --- this brings me back to the days when P2P filesharing was absolutely blooming, and people would freely scan and share in various forums ("bookz scene") the books they had either bought or borrowed. The average camera of the time was far less capable than ones today, so digitisations made with one were of lower quality than scans, and in the jargon they were known as "cams" - borrowing the term from the film piracy scene. Nonetheless, everyone mostly appreciated someone "camming" a book, especially if it was particularly rare or difficult to scan. But over time, cameras improved significantly in quality and their speed was unrivaled, so they gradually replaced scanning --- especially with the friendly competition that tended to happen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14830212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14830212 Seeing that we can now again be doing this completely legally and openly to older books, makes me tremendously happy. Nonetheless, I don't think it can completely replace that sense of adventure and thrill of risk involved in participating in a scanparty a decade ago.

KGIII 9y ago
As I recall, someone had built a machine that turned the pages and took pictures of the pages. I think they were refining it, as it just snapped both facing pages at once, and were going to market it. I never did find out what happened to that project. The work was being shared in one of the alt.bin. newsgroups and they had written a few blurbs about their machine. This predates the popularity of crowdfunding, I don't know if that would have helped. I do seem to recall them mentioning some interest from libraries or archival services but I have no idea what happened. Maybe someone here knows the rest of the story? I do have some older manuscripts, including some old mathematics works. I should see if there is a project to digitize them. I'd be happy with digital copies as I don't have a material attachment to the books themselves - I don't think. (I may, I've never really been faced with sending them out to someone.) So, I'd be not too incensed if the process was destructive or if the books weren't returned.
- polm23 9y ago

shmerl 9y ago