One of the many free eBooks available from OpenLibrary.org
I recently joined the 21st century and bought myself a Barnes & Noble Nook. Over the past few years, my opinions on e-Readers went from distrust (a threat to libraries!) to distaste (for the DRM) to curiosity and then, finally, I realized one could be useful. I refused to buy a Kindle due to the proprietary software and the fact that I wanted to use library eBooks.
However, Overdrive can be picky and difficult to use. With that, I was exceptionally pleased to see the Internet Archive’s recent announcement of an extensive free e-book collection at Open Library. From the announcement:
Today, a group of libraries led by the Internet Archive announced a new, cooperative 80,000+ 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…
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.
The big differences between OpenLibrary and Project Gutenberg (of which I am also a fan) are:
- Size – OpenLibrary has over 1 million free eBook titles available already (Project Gutenberg has 33,000)
- Most of the books from OpenLibrary are from the 20th century, and not all are public domain. Many have never been available in digital formats before
- OpenLibrary also links to OCLC’s WorldCat
- Accessibility - OpenLibrary has been working hard to ensure that everyone – including blind and visually impaired patrons – can access everything on their website. They use the DAISY format and work with the Library of Congress ‘ National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS)
There’s no question that eBooks are becoming increasingly popular. From the Internet Archive:
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,” asserts 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.
To sum up, there are lots of reasons why OpenLibrary.org is good news. Check it out!
[...] Open Library. She just blogged about it, and instead of writing my own post I’m just going to re-post hers, as it’s an excellent description. [...]