Milestones: The Internet Archive’s Lending Collection Reaches 2 Million Volumes

From an Internet Archive Blog Post by Chris Freeland:

The Internet Archive has reached a new milestone: 2 million. That’s how many modern books are now in its lending collection—available free to the public to borrow at any time, even from home.

“We are going strong,” said Chris Freeland, a librarian at the Internet Archive and director of the Open Libraries program. “We are making books available that people need access to online, and our patrons are really invested. We are doing a library’s work in the digital era.”

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“The Internet Archive is trying to achieve a collection reflective of great research and public libraries like the Boston Public Library,” said Brewster Kahle, digital librarian and founder of the Internet Archive, who began building the diverse library more than 20 years ago.

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The 2 million modern books are part of the Archive’s larger collection of 28 million texts that include older books in the public domain, magazines, and documents. Beyond texts, millions of movies, television news programs, images, live music concerts, and other sound recordings are also available, as well as more than 500 billion web pages that have been archived by the Wayback Machine. Nearly 1.5 million unique patrons use the Internet Archive each day, and about 17,000 items are uploaded daily.

Learn MUCH More, Read the Complete Blog Post  (approx. 1400 words)

See Also: Introducing the Open Library Explorer, a New Experimental Digital Library Interface to Search and Sort Millions of Books (December 15, 2020)

Filed under: Digital Collections, Interactive Tools, Libraries, News, Patrons and Users, Public Libraries