Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomk2
I wonder what annual fee it would take to operate a national digital library. Little physical overhead to drain resources compared to a brick library, but also lacking mandatory contributions by non-patrons (ie: taxpayers).
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The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped has an annual budget of US$50,000,000. However, that figure was from a third party site that is subject to exaggeration. Furthermore, it didn't provide a year.
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But a desktop or laptop with at least 16 GB RAM.
Buy two external drives of at least 5 Terrabytes:
* One drive is for the Calibre Library;
* One drive is a backup;
Install Linux.
Install Calibre.
Configure Calibre to deliver books via email/OPD/etc.
The laptop/desktop is roughly US$500.
The external drives are US$120 each, from Costco.
The external drives will hold roughly 1 million books.
That setup will be adequate for SOHO or SMB digital library.
Will probably work for a school digital library.
Project Gutenberg will provide roughly 40,000 titles.
If you don't mind older material, between Google books and Archive.org, you can pick up a couple of million books, gratis.