#digital libraries

[burningvelvet]

if the significance of the internet archive being threatened has been lost on anyone, maybe these quick comparisons will put it into perspective…

Banning the Internet Archive would be the equivalent of burning the Library of Alexandria hundreds of times…

[Image Descriptions in alt text]

[ebookporn]

2,178 Occult Books Now Digitized & Put Online, Thanks to the Ritman Library and Da Vinci Code Author Dan Brown

In 2018 we brought you some exciting news.

"Thanks to a generous donation from Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown, Amsterdam’s Ritman Library—a sizable collection of pre-1900 books on alchemy, astrology, magic, and other occult subjects—has been digitizing thousands of its rare texts under a digital education project cheekily called “Hermetically Open.” We are now pleased to report that the first 2,178 books from the Ritman project have come available in their online reading room."

Thanks Dan, doesn't make up for the time I spent reading The Da VInci Code but it helps.

[disastrid]

Documenting Queer Spaces – newly available digital collection

Two men and a woman at the bar, 1983 We are excited to announce that the Kim Deacon Collection photographs are now digitized and available t

We are excited to announce that the Kim Deacon Collection photographs are now digitized and available to the public on provlibdigital.org!

[meeedeee]

When is a library not a library? When it’s online, apparently.

<p>In March 2020, the Internet Archive, a nonprofit created by the entrepreneur Brewster Kahle, launched a new feature called the National E

When is a library not a library? When it’s online, apparently

"If you buy a physical book, you are allowed to sell or lend it because of a legal principle known as the “first sale doctrine,” which gives the owner of a (physical) object the right to dispose of that object in whatever way they wish, regardless of copyright. The Archive argued that the same principle should protect the sale or lending of a legally purchased digital copy, pointing out that all the copies of books it lent out had previously been acquired lawfully by libraries.'...

The Internet Archive’s lawyers also pointed to a Supreme Court decision, from the nineteen eighties, ruling that using a Sony Betamax video-cassette recorder to make a copy of a TV show was fair use. The Archive argued that its digital copies of print books similarly “improved the efficiency of delivering content to one entitled to receive the content” in a way that didn’t “unreasonably encroach on the commercial entitlements of the rights holder.” "

[thoughtportal]

Big publishers think libraries are the enemy

The recent Second Circuit decision in Hachette v. Internet Archive is only the latest battle in the war on libraries and the freedom to read

In fact, by fighting CDL, publishers are seeking to overstep the established boundaries of intellectual property law to exert continued control over an item that has already been purchased from them. And they are seeking to diminish the critical rights of readers to read the books they want without being subjected to censorship and surveillance. This is part and parcel with other attempts by digital publishers — of books, but also of films, video games, and other media — to turn media purchases into rentals, so as to extract endless money and private data from their customers.

[momentarymirth]

I love Internet Archive so much! It often shows books that have these little scribblings on the side or copious annotations. Of course, by the end of August, I was too into my reading to take screenshots of all the books I read. But what an experience.

[miscellaneous-art]

Hindu relief, Bali, Indonesia / Reliefbeeld op Bali, circa 1920-1935. Leiden University Libraries