Our plan includes at-scale circulation of these eBooks, enabling libraries owning the physical works to lend digital copies. As 1 of 8 semifinalists for MacArthur’s 100&Change award, we seek your feedback. 4 million eBooks, enabling the free, long-term, public access to knowledge.
What would it mean if you had easy online access to 4 million modern books–the equivalent of a great public or university library? What would that mean for the print disabled and those unable whatsapp lead to reach their public libraries? How would that change innovation and scholarship? In an era of misinformation, how can we tie information to the published works of humankind?
Those are some of the questions we’ve been asking ourselves at the Internet Archive as we hone our plans for Open Libraries–our proposal to the MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change competition to tackle one of the world’s toughest problems. We are now one of eight semifinalists vying for $100 million grant to carry out our goal: democratizing access to knowledge by providing free, long-term access to a digital library of 4 million modern books. We call our project Open Libraries because we want to help every library in the nation to provide its members with digital access to its rich collections.