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The Supreme Court of Canada has decided the much-anticipated York University v. Access Copyright case, reaffirming—in an unanimous opinion—that “public access to and dissemination of artistic and intellectual works” are “a primary goal of copyright.” We join our friends at the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, CIPPIC, and all throughout Canada in applauding this important decision. The Access Copyright case was … Read more

Back in March 2020, teachers were asking themselves a nearly unthinkable question: “How are we going to get books in students’ hands with our schools & libraries closed?” We’ve heard from hundreds of teachers about the challenges they faced in connecting remote learners with books during COVID. Here is their story: And here we are … Read more

Louis Brizuela says managing the microfiche digitization center for Democracy’s Library gives him a sense of pride. “I feel like I’m making a difference,” said the 28-year-old who lives in the Bay Area. “We’re scanning and preserving all this really cool content.” Brizuela and his six-person team are currently digitizing U.S. Supreme Court case documents … Read more

On Thursday, September 9, the Internet Archive will host an online webinar, “Reflecting on 9/11: Twenty Years of Archived TV News” Learn from scholars, journalists, archivists, and data scientists about the importance of archived television for gaining insights into our evolving understanding of history and society. Participants include the Internet Archive, The American Archive of Public Broadcasting, The Vanderbilt Television … Read more

Motivating students to stay engaged with online instruction can take some creativity. Working at a special education learning center in Los Angeles, Luca Messarra found the promise of choosing a book to read for fun after a lesson kept his 9- to 11-year-old kids going. Although access to physical books was limited during the pandemic, … Read more

Although Casey Patterson spent much of the COVID-19 lockdown in a dank San Francisco basement apartment, he says he felt lucky in many ways. The graduate student in English from Stanford University stayed healthy and—despite not having physical access to a library—was able to research his dissertation, teach classes, and prepare for job interviews. This … Read more

As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Internet Archive is able to survive, thrive, and grow thanks to the generosity of our donors. That’s why we’re happy to announce the launch of a new way to donate easily from anywhere: SMS giving!  Simply text ARCHIVE to 44321 and you’ll receive a secure link that you can use to make … Read more

The kind of materials that Stanford English professor Margaret Cohen uses in her work, including the history of ocean travel in the period known as the “Age of Sail,” can be difficult to find. Books and illustrations from the 18th and 19th centuries needed in her research and teaching are often tucked away in rare book collections. … Read more

This is the second in a series of guest blog posts exploring the real-world implications of the Decentralized Web Principles. Coraline Ada Ehmke is the creator of the Contributor Covenant and the author of the Hippocratic License, an open source license designed to promote and protect human rights. In 2021, Coraline founded the Organization for Ethical Source and currently serves as its … Read more

“Jump Cut” is a model for open access journals. When the Internet Archive digitized older issues of “Jump Cut” from microfilm, we found that it had already been posted, in textual form, by the publisher. When we reached out to see if we could open up the microfilm version for free public access and download, they were … Read more