The Internet Archive's Open Library will let you sponsor a book, paying for it to be scanned

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/22/hathi-never-forgets.html

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I can think of a number of titles I’d like to see scanned, but the stock doesn’t appear to be searchable. There were only 28 titles visible for spnsorship. Is there a way to search for & sponsor a specific book?

At the top of the page, there’s a search box:
SearchBox
Type a book title there. Click on the resulting search results until you get to the page for a specific book. If it’s available for sponsorship, you’ll see this:
SponsorEbook

I guess the books I am interested in are not available for sponsorship. There’s no “Sponsor” button on their pages, though they do show up in the Archive’s catalog.

I’ve sponsored a book, but was disappointed that some of the books listed didn’t provide the option of sponsoring for some strange reason (i.e. not already e-books), and many books aren’t listed in any form whatsoever.

Some years back I downloaded one of my great, great, great grandfather’s books, maybe from Gutenberg, I can’t remember.

But I didn’t get far in reading it, odd characters were there. I assume a bad scan, though maybe it was my Kobo reader.

But that seems another choice, pay for a rescan.

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Even for this pirate site, that is ballsy.

Is this digital library from archive.org legal legal or does it relies on a grey-area legal?

So, the sponsor gets to read the ebook before anyone else. I assume that the IAOL website would forever show the sponsor’s name associated with the ebook, otherwise, any scanned ebook would be the equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge ‘sold’ over and over again.

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