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Mek here from Internet Archive's OpenLibrary.org. We've thought carefully about this as well. We feel it's critical that Internet Archive and Better World Book
by mekarpeles 7y ago
Mek here from Internet Archive's OpenLibrary.org. We've thought carefully about this as well.
We feel it's critical that Internet Archive and Better World Books aren't the only organizations involved in determining which books should be preserved.
In late October, we launched a new program which allows anyone in the world to take control of our Library's shelves and contribute/sponsor the books which reflect their values:
https://openlibrary.org/sponsorship https://openlibrary.org/sponsorship
So far we've seen an influx of high quality reference books come in (everything from African antiquity to Microbial biology) that we almost certainly wouldn't have procured ourselves based solely on the data available from e.g. library holdings, wikipedia citations, etc.
Having Better World Books as a partner has been incredibly helpful because we're able to calculate sponsorship prices quite accuracy (because shipping prices are included) which was a big challenge with other APIs we previously used. Also importantly, Better World Books helps our patrons sponsor older books which are often more at risk of disappearing, which is one (of many) useful heuristics when considering preservation.
- joveian 7y agoI suggest updating that FAQ to make it clear that you also accept direct book donations and linking to: https://openlibrary.org/bookdrive https://openlibrary.org/bookdrive
- toomuchtodo 7y agoIs the number of digital copies you can lend out limited by only how many physical books you have "dematerialized"? For example, if I shipped 10 used copies of a book to Open Library and you recorded you destroyed them, could you lend out 10 digital copies at a time?
- mekarpeles 7y agoThis question appears in https://controlleddigitallending.org/faq https://controlleddigitallending.org/faq. Specifically for our sponsorship program at this stage, we decided to limit eligible books to those we had no copies of (in the interest of maximizing preservation -- we're as much an archive as we are a library). In general we're not thrilled about books being destroyed. There's always someone who can benefit from a book. Also, one never knows when a book may have to be scanned again because a digital copy could theoretically become lost, corrupt, or benefit from new tech (e.g. a palimpsest). These are all big reasons our digitization process is explicitly non-destructive. http://openlibraries.online http://openlibraries.online describes how we are working with other Library partners and including them in our model to help make works more broadly available. None of this directly answers your question which is probably better answered by a lawyer. I'm just a fake librarian.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoThanks for taking the time to reply.
- dr_dshiv 7y agoI love this. Individual self interest for the collective benefit. Now, I wish there was something like this for translation and summarisation. I'm a fiend for renaissance/enlightenment lit that is in Latin or just hard to read -- but amazing and world changing.