A group of libraries led by the Internet Archive have announced a new, cooperative 80,000+ eBook lending collection of mostly 20th century books on OpenLibrary.org, a site where it’s already possible to read over 1 million eBooks without restriction.

According to the Internet Archive post/release, any OpenLibrary.org account holder can borrow up to 5 eBooks at a time, for up to 2 weeks. Books can only be borrowed by one person at a time. People can choose to borrow either an in-browser version (viewed using the Internet Archive’s BookReader web application), or a PDF or ePub version, managed by the free Adobe Digital Editions software. This new technology follows the lead of the Google eBookstore (which we don’t yet have in Australia!), which sells books from many publishers to be read using Google’s books-in-browsers technology.

Openlibrary.org is worth a visit, if only to see some of  1,000,000 free ebook titles available.

The World’s classic literature at your fingertips!

How about Down with skool!  A guide to school life for tiny pupils and their parents published in 1953. That’s one I have to check out – should be funny or perhaps frightening, depending on what’s inside!

But really – this sort of development is exciting. While the books are ‘old’ – they also include some quality literature. Lot’s of  good reading to while away the time, or expand the mind.

Related Articles

• Internet Archive and Libraries Develop Joint Collection of 80,000+ eBooks (oedb.org)
• Internet Archive Partners With 150 Libraries to Launch an E-Book Lending Program (readwriteweb.com)
• eBook Lending Library Launched (news.slashdot.org)