How Can You Help The Internet Archive? (A Repost)

In June of 2020, facing a range of challenges, we posted a host of information about how you could help the Internet Archive through difficult and pressing times.

Pretty much all of the suggestions and links in that essay still hold up and are relevant this month as well, and we are the Historical Web people, so here is a full link to that post again:

Your words of support and letting us know what we mean to you are appreciated, and read with great happiness. Thanks.

Today’s lower court decision in Hachette v. Internet Archive is a blow to all libraries and the communities we serve. This decision impacts libraries across the US who rely on controlled digital lending to connect their patrons with books online. It hurts authors by saying that unfair licensing models are the only way their books can be read online. And it holds back access to information in the digital age, harming all readers, everywhere.

But it’s not over—we will keep fighting for the traditional right of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books. We will be appealing the judgment and encourage everyone to come together as a community to support libraries against this attack by corporate publishers. 

We will continue our work as a library. This case does not challenge many of the services we provide with digitized books including interlibrary loan, citation linking, access for the print-disabled, text and data mining, purchasing ebooks, and ongoing donation and preservation of books.

Statement from Internet Archive founder, Brewster Kahle:
“Libraries are more than the customer service departments for corporate database products. For democracy to thrive at global scale, libraries must be able to sustain their historic role in society—owning, preserving, and lending books.