2017 Charleston Library Conference

In 1973, MIT Press re-issued a work by Frederick Law Olmsted telling the story of his plans for New York City’s Central Park. If you search online for this gem today, you’ll find it sells for about $500 in the used book market. Now, MIT Press is partnering with the Internet Archive to digitize its deep backlist books, enabling a new generation to read Olmsted’s classic online for the first time. With support from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Peter Baldwin and Lisbet Rausing, this partnership represents an important advance in providing free, long-term public access to knowledge. MIT Press Director, Amy Brand, and Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle and Wendy Hanamura will talk about the opportunities for libraries in this new model.

Where it has the rights to do so, MIT Press is working with the Internet Archive (IA) to digitize hundreds of it’s deep backlist books and to enable open access where legal and practical. At a minimum, the digitized books will be available for free one-at-a-time lending through openlibrary.org and through libraries that participate in IA’s broader Open Libraries project, which enables libraries that own the hard copies to offer digital access to their patrons—just like borrowing a book.

Come learn how your library or publishing house may benefit when publishers digitize their legacy publications, making them accessible, searchable and discoverable for future generations. Arcadia has pledged to fund other university presses that join this effort. As MIT Press Director, Amy Brand, notes: “I see this effort as one way to get out in front of widespread circulation of unauthorized digital files for these works.” Explore this groundbreaking model for cooperation between publishers, authors and libraries to ensure critical works from the past will be preserved and enjoyed by future generations.