New York, Mar 31: With people stuck at home due to the coronavirus lockdown, Internet Archive, the American digital library, has opened the National Emergency Library. This online library hosts a collection of more than 1.4 million copyrighted e-books that you can access for free, till June 30 at least. Or till the US national emergency is over – whichever is later.
The Internet Archive mentioned that they have taken this step to help deal with the global need to access research materials. They have also suspended the waitlist for books and have created an emergency library. Users can borrow books from the National Emergency Library without being on the waitlist.
Earlier, Internet Archive’s Open Library only allowed people to “borrow” digital copies of the books it held in storage and those could be taken for a limited amount of time. All the books are now being made freely available for students and researchers around the world.
Best initiative