Thread: Open Library - The Only Place to Borrow Many Titles
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Old 03-31-2013, 07:19 PM   #1
SteveEisenberg
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Open Library - The Only Place to Borrow Many Titles
I've just been looking at www.openlibrary.org, and there's a lot there. I think it deserves more attention.

Here a description written in July 2011:

http://librarianinblack.net/libraria...or-ebooks.html

Quote:
A new project with 1,000+ currently participating libraries, including mine, is the Lending Library, a swiftly growing collection of 100,000+ eBooks from the 20th century, including many popular titles (though not those from the most recent 15 years or so).
No library that I have a card for is on Open Library's participating libraries list, but when I log in (free registration), the top of my screen reads as follows:

Quote:
Hello! The State of Pennsylvania is participating in our eBook lending program. Browse the growing lending library of over 200,000 eBooks!
And I am thus able to borrow many copyrighted books.

Looking for what could be a popular title with Mobileread members, I searched for The Once and Future King by T. H. White (died 1964, so still under copyright everywhere). Open Library has three copies. I downloaded one as an Adobe DRM ePUB, just to be sure it would work. It did. Their copy may not be as nicely formatted as the US$14.99 Kindle and Nook downloads, but when I read a few scattered paragraphs, I didn't notice scan errors. Then, since I don't really want to read the book, I returned it.

Next I went to search.overdrive.com, my usual eBook source, to see if I could borrow it that way. I could not. There are libraries in Australia, Canada, and Britain who offer Once and Future King via Overdrive, but none in the US.

I found one copyrighted title that is on my want-to-read list, is not available anywhere via Overdrive, and is listed with Open Library -- but it's marked as checked out:

http://openlibrary.org/works/OL15147511W/The_Nazarene

As far as I can tell, there is no way to put in a reserve. Do I have to periodically check back, or am I missing Open Library's reserve mechanism?

Also, I'm curious about how they can do this. Open Library seems too big and connected (see http://openlibrary.org/libraries) to ignore copyright law, but I can't see where, in their model, anyone is getting paid.
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