Thread by @internetarchive

Did you know that the Internet Archive has a physical archive that houses millions of books (as in: actual, physical, paper books)? For every book that we lend to users online, we have a physical copy that is preserved in our archive. A 🧵

We get our books the same way as other libraries: we buy books and we receive donated books. Some of those donations come from libraries that are reevaluating their physical collections, like Hamilton Public Library: blog.archive.org/2021/05/26/beh…

And some books come to us from libraries that are shutting down forever, like Marygrove College. The school closed in 2019 & rather than sell off the collection, the Board donated the entire library to us for preservation & digitization: blog.archive.org/2020/10/20/dig…

So, for each of the 65k books now available to borrow from the Marygrove College collection at archive.org/details/marygr…, the actual book we scanned has been preserved in our physical archive. But those physical books don’t circulate.

Rather than circulate the physical book we own, we lend a scanned digital copy of the book to one user at a time through the library practice known as controlled digital lending. Here’s how it works:

There are hundreds of libraries that are using controlled digital lending to reach their patrons where they are reading & learning today: online. #EmpoweringLibraries