6 ms·

National Emergency Library

172 points by mauliknshah 7y ago

ryuukk_ 7y ago
.org ... "National" they should rename their website to https://archive.us.gov https://archive.us.gov
ewams 7y ago
"log in and this book can be borrowed for 14 days"
- aiscapehumanity 7y ago
  They can be re-borrowed instantly though.
  - Karunamon 7y ago
    Not much help in an emergency, though.
    - roywiggins 7y ago
      The emergency it's meant to cover is the fact that all the actual libraries are closed, not to replace owning books.
8bitsrule 7y ago
If you go to the site and click the 'Views' sort-by, you'll see the most popular titles. For some reason, #1 at the moment, by a factor of 3, is Sylvia Brown's 2008 End of Days. Go figure. Brown was 'a medium with psychic abilities.' Yep, that's where we're at. Viewed 20 times more than 'You Can Negotiate Anything'.
- julianz 7y ago
  I think there was an article the other day about people who supposedly predicted COVID-19 in books, etc. Pretty sure they included her and also pointed out all the other things she got way wrong. But that probably explains a lot of the clicks.
- dannyw 7y ago
  The specific quote from the book: "In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments. Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attack again ten years later, and then disappear completely." I think it's complete bullshit, but also no surprise why it is so popular.
  - Kye 7y ago
    Make enough predictions and one is bound to land. It's not even the first coronavirus outbreak "around 2020." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus#Outbreaks_of_coronavirus-related_diseases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus#Outbreaks_of_coron...
Rebelgecko 7y ago
Does anyone know how they're legally able to do this, when publishers make my local library buy a license for every concurrent copy of an ebook that someone checks out?
- jrwr 7y ago
  A lot of their books are 1 person checkout only and they do have exemptions from DMCA somewhat
- leephillips 7y ago
  They are not. They are violating copyright law, and stealing from writers and publishers. Twitter is full of complaints by writers who discovered their illegally scanned books here, pointing out that this will make it harder for them to eat and pay rent during the isolation period.
  - 8bitsrule 7y ago
    In my whole life, I've never heard of a significant author who complained about one of their books being in a library, or about library patrons as 'thieves'. IA has deals with countless libraries, and since the libraries are closed, and the online schools are open, I very much doubt that IA will keep up with the temporary loss of the libraries or the needs of schools. "Public support for this emergency measure has come from over 100 individuals, libraries and universities across the world"
    - leephillips 7y ago
      This is not a complaint about libraries or library patrons. I love and use libraries. Authors love to see their books in libraries, including their ebooks. The details matter. Scanning a book and putting it on the internet without the right to do so is not what a library does.
      - dorchadas 7y ago
        I think there might be some misunderstanding. There was a good comment on Reddit [1] about how all this was legal. From what I gathered, libraries scanned books that didn't have digital copies already made, and offered them to patrons to "check out". They used software to make sure that they only checked out a total combined digital/print number equal to the number of print copies they had bought, with software to make sure they couldn't be copied. That seems fair, to me (and is, apparently, legal). The National Emergency Library basically opens that up to anyone now, however, with no limits on how many times a book can be checked out at once. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/fpsqm0/the_internet_archive_in_san_francisco_announced/flnsiq1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/fpsqm0/the_internet_...
supernova87a 7y ago
While I'm sure it's a wonderful resource, those cover scans as the thumbnails are generally useless (wall full of blank colored tiles?), and many of the titles are so uninformative and badly organized you almost have to know what you want to search productively -- it's not like you're going to randomly stumble across something interesting in a sea of 1M titles. Seems like it needs some volunteer contribution to do some curation / tagging / rating to get people to be able to use it successfully...
- 8bitsrule 7y ago
  Their search engine is quite good. The IA is always asking for volunteers. Maybe you've got some time off?
sudhirj 7y ago
Sorry to keep plugging this, but I think it’s much more important to take good books and lay them out well for reading on all screen sizes, make them accessible, give people good fonts etc. Trying to do that on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22710232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22710232
geofft 7y ago
The blog post has a bit more information about what's going on: http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-emergency-library-to-provide-digitized-books-to-students-and-the-public/ http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-eme... These are scans that the Internet Archive already had that they had been making available through libraries on a check-out basis, which apparently is fine under fair use. Their claim now is, because of the national emergency, it's fair use to make these scans directly available to everyone.
justinclift 7y ago
Signing up doesn't seem to work. Filled out the captcha, and the "Sign Up" button is just spinning forever. It's been a few minutes.
userbinator 7y ago
Even without this, the archive.org has lots of interesting books to read, games to play[1], etc; but with all the quarantining and such, I suspect people will just use it far more often. [1] https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games
EamonnMR 7y ago
On the one hand, I love the IA and really hate to see them burn Bridges/risk getting shut down. On the other hand, this crisis is going to require bold action and moving faster than the speed of money and negotiation. I was hoping to see 'screw it, everything is free' from hospitals or someone knocking off ventilator designs but hey, this is a start.
ffmike 7y ago
As an author with half a dozen or so titles in this archive, I'm happy to see this. It's not like I was making any money from books published a decade or more ago.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

172 points by mauliknshah 7y ago

ryuukk_ 7y ago

.org ... "National" they should rename their website to https://archive.us.gov https://archive.us.gov

ewams 7y ago

"log in and this book can be borrowed for 14 days"

aiscapehumanity 7y ago
They can be re-borrowed instantly though.
- Karunamon 7y ago
  Not much help in an emergency, though.
  - roywiggins 7y ago
    The emergency it's meant to cover is the fact that all the actual libraries are closed, not to replace owning books.

8bitsrule 7y ago

If you go to the site and click the 'Views' sort-by, you'll see the most popular titles. For some reason, #1 at the moment, by a factor of 3, is Sylvia Brown's 2008 End of Days. Go figure. Brown was 'a medium with psychic abilities.' Yep, that's where we're at. Viewed 20 times more than 'You Can Negotiate Anything'.

julianz 7y ago
I think there was an article the other day about people who supposedly predicted COVID-19 in books, etc. Pretty sure they included her and also pointed out all the other things she got way wrong. But that probably explains a lot of the clicks.
dannyw 7y ago
The specific quote from the book: "In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments. Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attack again ten years later, and then disappear completely." I think it's complete bullshit, but also no surprise why it is so popular.
- Kye 7y ago
  Make enough predictions and one is bound to land. It's not even the first coronavirus outbreak "around 2020." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus#Outbreaks_of_coronavirus-related_diseases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus#Outbreaks_of_coron...

Rebelgecko 7y ago

Does anyone know how they're legally able to do this, when publishers make my local library buy a license for every concurrent copy of an ebook that someone checks out?

jrwr 7y ago
A lot of their books are 1 person checkout only and they do have exemptions from DMCA somewhat
leephillips 7y ago
They are not. They are violating copyright law, and stealing from writers and publishers. Twitter is full of complaints by writers who discovered their illegally scanned books here, pointing out that this will make it harder for them to eat and pay rent during the isolation period.
- 8bitsrule 7y ago
  In my whole life, I've never heard of a significant author who complained about one of their books being in a library, or about library patrons as 'thieves'. IA has deals with countless libraries, and since the libraries are closed, and the online schools are open, I very much doubt that IA will keep up with the temporary loss of the libraries or the needs of schools. "Public support for this emergency measure has come from over 100 individuals, libraries and universities across the world"
  - leephillips 7y ago
    This is not a complaint about libraries or library patrons. I love and use libraries. Authors love to see their books in libraries, including their ebooks. The details matter. Scanning a book and putting it on the internet without the right to do so is not what a library does.
    - dorchadas 7y ago
      I think there might be some misunderstanding. There was a good comment on Reddit [1] about how all this was legal. From what I gathered, libraries scanned books that didn't have digital copies already made, and offered them to patrons to "check out". They used software to make sure that they only checked out a total combined digital/print number equal to the number of print copies they had bought, with software to make sure they couldn't be copied. That seems fair, to me (and is, apparently, legal). The National Emergency Library basically opens that up to anyone now, however, with no limits on how many times a book can be checked out at once. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/fpsqm0/the_internet_archive_in_san_francisco_announced/flnsiq1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/fpsqm0/the_internet_...

supernova87a 7y ago

While I'm sure it's a wonderful resource, those cover scans as the thumbnails are generally useless (wall full of blank colored tiles?), and many of the titles are so uninformative and badly organized you almost have to know what you want to search productively -- it's not like you're going to randomly stumble across something interesting in a sea of 1M titles. Seems like it needs some volunteer contribution to do some curation / tagging / rating to get people to be able to use it successfully...

8bitsrule 7y ago
Their search engine is quite good. The IA is always asking for volunteers. Maybe you've got some time off?

sudhirj 7y ago

Sorry to keep plugging this, but I think it’s much more important to take good books and lay them out well for reading on all screen sizes, make them accessible, give people good fonts etc. Trying to do that on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22710232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22710232

geofft 7y ago

The blog post has a bit more information about what's going on: http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-emergency-library-to-provide-digitized-books-to-students-and-the-public/ http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-eme... These are scans that the Internet Archive already had that they had been making available through libraries on a check-out basis, which apparently is fine under fair use. Their claim now is, because of the national emergency, it's fair use to make these scans directly available to everyone.

justinclift 7y ago

Signing up doesn't seem to work. Filled out the captcha, and the "Sign Up" button is just spinning forever. It's been a few minutes.

userbinator 7y ago

Even without this, the archive.org has lots of interesting books to read, games to play[1], etc; but with all the quarantining and such, I suspect people will just use it far more often. [1] https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games

EamonnMR 7y ago

On the one hand, I love the IA and really hate to see them burn Bridges/risk getting shut down. On the other hand, this crisis is going to require bold action and moving faster than the speed of money and negotiation. I was hoping to see 'screw it, everything is free' from hospitals or someone knocking off ventilator designs but hey, this is a start.

ffmike 7y ago

As an author with half a dozen or so titles in this archive, I'm happy to see this. It's not like I was making any money from books published a decade or more ago.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]