Archive.org opens huge ebook lending library

[CazMar]

Originally Posted by carld

Was the book you got a Public Domain work or one under current copyright?

I looked through their Science-Fiction ebooks and saw that The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson looked interesting and was available as an ebook. I clicked on "Borrow" and got options to search libraries or stores. I picked libraries and after entering my zipcode Overdrive informed me that it wasn't available in my area .... gee thanks.

This is just available as a free download from Project Gutenberg and as an audiobookfrom Librivox. Perhaps they don't "lend" public domain works as they are readily available?

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by tomsem

There are some problems with borrowing from the archive.org collection (the "Lending Library"). The license is tied to the device that handles fulfillment of the .acsm file. The only 'device' that works is Adobe Digital Editions, and the only other things you can read with are things that ADE recognizes when they're tethered (e.g. Sony). You cannot take the fulfilled .ePub/.PDF file and side load it to, say, Bluefire or Overdrive on iOS, as you can with books borrowed from Overdrive portals. For me, it greatly limits the already limited usefulness of a limited collection of titles with lots of formatting issues and typos.

Bluefire can handle the fulfillment of the acsm file itself, so I don't see why that wouldn't work, once someone has written the right bookmarklet for it.

[charleski]

Well, I live in the UK, and was able to download a copyrighted book without problem (a translation of Plato published in 1962) direct from the site. But other some other copyrighted works weren't available ("House on the Borderland" just gave me a page with a link to WorldCat and some bookshops).

After taking a look at the quality of the scanning, I'd say don't bother though:

The only other doubt we hear of in antiquity is recorded by Olympi-odorus, who says that the "divine Proclus" regarded the Epistles as spurious, 8ta to dv-Xovv ttJ? <j>paGeoi^.'^ But since he records in the same passage that Proclus also rejected the Republic and the Laws, we need not ascribe much importance to this evidently garbled tradition.

... indeed

[rogue_librarian]

That looks like Greek to me. Literally.

[graycyn]

I was finding a number of books that I would've loved to borrow, old stuff from my childhood, all out of print. Probably still under copyright, but certainly not available for sale in ebook form.

However, for whatever reason, I cannot seem to download ANY of them through ADE. I keep getting an error message. Yet I downloaded an Overdrive library book just this morning.

Guess I'll try again at another point, see if it works later. Frustrating.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Bluefire can handle the fulfillment of the acsm file itself, so I don't see why that wouldn't work, once someone has written the right bookmarklet for it.

I somehow finally did get Bluefire to handle fulfillment of a book. I think I just downloaded directly from openlibrary.org with mobile Safari, and when it prompted me to do something with the .acsm file, I chose Bluefire. It didn't seem to work at first - gave me some error like 'not available yet' when I tried opening the book last night - but when I checked this morning it opened right up. I'd previously tried emailing the .ascm file to my iTouch from my laptop after having downloaded it there, and opening the attachment with Bluefire, but that didn't seem to work. But maybe if I'd waited longer??!

However, the 'return item' function does not work - a problem since you only get to borrow 5 items at a time, for 2 weeks each, and I've used up about 3 of these with my failed experiments. Hope nobody wants to read "The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC" for the next couple of weeks...I know I don't! <g>

Even ADE gave me an error on 'return item'. But it worked the next time I tried it. Maybe the server is overloaded or something, and I'll eventually be able to get 'return item' to work with Bluefire if I keep trying it.

I was hoping to try Kindle3 browser to read online - but there is some sort of URL redirection going on that it cannot handle.

I'll have to play with it some more.

[graycyn]

Well, I tried again this morning, but no dice. All I get is an error message out of ADE "Error getting license
Server communication problem: E_ADEPT_IO".

Tried with PDF and epub. Tried through IE instead of Firefox. No luck. ADE is working fine for library books, so I don't think it's my installation.

I suppose the good news is that since my downloads failed, the books will be returned in 5 minutes so that someone else can check them out. That's what happened yesterday.

[Critteranne]

Originally Posted by Catlady

But there are books available that are not public domain but are out of print--like a Ben Casey TV tie-in, YAs by Betty Cavanna, nurse romances, a handful of Phyllis A. Whitney and Dorothy Eden titles. It's not going to be of much use to folks who want current books, I guess, but I'm looking forward to finding lots of oddball books there.

They have old Gothics?!



I just wish it were easier to find them. Some are under Gothic Fiction, some are under Gothics, etc., etc.

Edited to Add: I'm now reading an old book about King George VI. It's not a true biography, more of a royal puff piece, but still interesting. He looked good in uniform.