From my library to yours | Everybody's Libraries Everybody's Libraries Libraries for everyone, by everyone, shared with everyone, about everything Skip to content Home About About the Free Decimal Correspondence Free Decimal Correspondence ILS services for discovery applications John Mark Ockerbloom The Metadata Challenge ← Public Domain Day 2013: or, There and Back Again From Wikipedia to our libraries → From my library to yours Posted on February 11, 2013 by John Mark Ockerbloom Even with well over one and half million books and serials, the collection I maintain at The Online Books Page is far from comprehensive.  The gaps in coverage are not hard to notice at sites like mine, because most material published under copyright– which can be as much as 90 years old at this point– is not made freely available online.  But all libraries, no matter how large or well-provisioned, have their gaps.  No one can collect everything, and a persistent reader or researcher will eventually find that their questions and interests go beyond the bounds of any particular collection. However, there are lots of libraries out there, as well as lots of online information and literature that hasn’t been collected into an institutional library.  A good library, of whatever size, serves its users well by collecting the most useful materials it can get for their needs, and helping them get whatever else they need in other places.  Jeff Jarvis expressed this basic idea well a few years ago when discussing news organizations: “Cover what you do best.  Link to the rest.” Many libraries already do this, in certain ways.  The inter-library loan system helps library users who know they want a particular title their own library doesn’t have.  Many libraries also maintain links to websites on various topics from their own library website or catalog.  But these links, often maintained separately by each library, can only cover so much ground, as librarians have limited time to collect and maintain links.  Even consortially maintained collections of links struggle to go beyond fairly generalized or particular-niche focuses, and stay current. Libraries can do more, though.  People coming to a library often have a particular topic in mind that they want to learn or read more about.  They’re often looking for something they can pick up quickly, and for free.  Knowing what that topic is, we should be able to point them towards useful literature they can quickly and freely obtain, whether or not it’s a title they already had in mind, and whether or not it’s in our own collection or something we link to directly.  That’s the purpose of some new links now available on The Online Books Page. For example, say you’re a high school student looking for books on the Underground Railroad.  If you browse to this subject on the Online Books Page, you’ll find a number of free online books I list on this topic, and related topics.  As before, you can explore those related topics, if you’re interested (maybe checking out fugitive slave biographies, for instance); or you can try digging deeper for books specifically on the Underground Railroad via the extended shelves. But most of what you’ll find on my site will be 19th century and early 20th century materials.  Your local library is likely to have books you can freely read as well, reflecting more up-to-date historical research, as well as books that might be more accessible to a high school student.  There might also be useful research materials online that you can look at for free. That’s why there’s a new “See also…” note just under the big “Underground Railroad” heading.  If you click on the words “your library” in that note, you’ll be referred to your regular library, if we know about it, to see what they have on the Underground Railroad.  (If you haven’t already told us which local library you want to use regularly, we give you a list of choices.  It’s a pretty small list to start with, but I’m taking requests for more libraries to add.  Or you can opt for OCLC’s Worldcat.org– they cover lots of libraries throughout North America and beyond.)  Even after you register a preferred library, you’re not stuck with only using that one.  You can click on the “elsewhere” link in the note to try a different library or service from the one you usually check– like maybe the university library that’s near your public library (or vice versa). You might also want to find online research resources that aren’t books.  For some of those, try clicking on the Wikipedia link provided for this subject.  While the quality and reliability of Wikipedia articles themselves can vary, most mature Wikipedia entries include a rich set of useful links to more information.  (I’ve discussed previously how useful Wikipedia is as a concept-oriented catalog.)  The references and external links on Wikipedia’s Underground Railroad article, for instance, cover a wide range of informational websites, contemporary and current books, and digital library collections. Similarly, if you’re looking at a list of online books by a particular author (like, say, W. E. B. Dubois), you’ll find a link at the bottom of the page to find more books by the author in libraries, as well as links to online books or Wikipedia articles about the author near the top.  There are also links to find library copies of a particular book on its detailed catalog page; see for instance, the links at the bottom of our catalog entry for The Souls of Black Folk.  This can be useful for people who want a print copy, or a different edition from the ones we list. So far, I’ve added links from The Online Books Page to Wikipedia for more than 17,000 subjects, and links to library catalogs for millions of subjects, authors, and titles.  (My thanks to OCLC, the Library of Congress, and Wikipedia for providing bulk access to the data that makes it possible to do much of this automatically.)  I’ll be developing this service further, and doing more things with this data, in ways that I hope to describe here shortly.  But I hope this first step is a useful demonstration of ways that different kinds of libraries and catalogs– online and local, academic and public, institutional and informal– can support each other through user-directed, context-sensitive, concept-level links between collections. Share this: Email Print Twitter Facebook Reddit Like this: Like Loading... Related About John Mark Ockerbloom I'm a digital library strategist at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. View all posts by John Mark Ockerbloom → This entry was posted in libraries, online books. Bookmark the permalink. ← Public Domain Day 2013: or, There and Back Again From Wikipedia to our libraries → 2 Responses to From my library to yours Jonah says: February 28, 2013 at 2:53 pm Hey John, I have this idea, and I would like your opinion. I’ve been reading your blog and you seem very passionate to the idea of openness and free books, obviously. I’m writing a novel and I want to release it for free. For a couple reasons, to not do so seems strikingly dissident with its content, and because I think it’s an incredibly interesting experiment. I can see multiple problems in this, but the biggest thing I’m worried about is how do you suggest that it’s good content while still making it free? (I’m sure you are already wary of this. My uncle tells this story, he worked in a skate shop, they charged 7 bucks for a sharpen, but when they raised the price to 22 they tripled their business, as the premier sharpeners in town. I also think it has other ideas, the physical, malleable copy of a book is something you commit to buy. ‘Well since I bought this book I should probably read it’). Convincing people to read the book has to consider, incredibly, ease of access. So I’ve been thinking of starting my own website, or a simple WordPress blog, but ideally I would not like to host it, an option that occurred to me after seeing sites like yours. With this new wave of ebooks, a route I considered, there are already many suggestions on building an online presence yadda yadda, but I think ideas can do more. Anyways, there are many other considerations, editing, and the aesthetics of the online page. I’m curious what you think. Elaine says: March 14, 2013 at 4:01 pm Looking for book to read on my phone, title Ambitious love by Rosie Harris? Comments are closed. Search for: RSS feed Pages About Free Decimal Correspondence ILS services for discovery applications John Mark Ockerbloom The Metadata Challenge Recent Posts From our subjects to yours (and vice versa) Everybody’s Library Questions: Finding films in the public domain Build a better registry: My intended comments to the Library of Congress on the next Register of Copyrights Welcome to everybody’s online libraries Public Domain Day 2020: Coming Around Again Recent Comments John Mark Ockerbloom on Everybody’s Library Questions: Newspaper copyrights, notices, and renewals Pamela Hutchinson on Everybody’s Library Questions: Newspaper copyrights, notices, and renewals John Mark Ockerbloom on Welcome to everybody’s online libraries Nicholas Escobar on Welcome to everybody’s online libraries John Mark Ockerbloom on Welcome to everybody’s online libraries Archives December 2020 March 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 July 2019 June 2019 January 2019 December 2018 October 2018 June 2018 January 2018 December 2017 September 2017 January 2017 October 2016 September 2016 July 2016 May 2016 January 2016 January 2015 June 2014 January 2014 October 2013 August 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 July 2012 May 2012 January 2012 October 2011 September 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 Access for all Open Access News Copyrights and wrongs Copyfight Copyright & Fair Use Freedom to Tinker Lawrence Lessig General library-related news and comment LISNews TeleRead Interesting folks Jessamyn West John Scalzi Jonathan Rochkind K. G. Schneider Karen Coyle Lawrence Lessig Leslie Johnston Library Loon Lorcan Dempsey Paul Courant Peter Brantley Walt Crawford Metadata and friends Planet Cataloging Shiny tech Boing Boing O’Reilly Radar Planet Code4lib Tales from the repository RepositoryMan Writing and publishing if:book Making Light Publishing Frontier Everybody's Libraries Blog at WordPress.com. Send to Email Address Your Name Your Email Address Cancel Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Email check failed, please try again Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. %d bloggers like this: