How the MYFest Library Works

This may change as things develop during the coming months of MYFest (it is so cool to be part of something unfolding in this emergent way over time...), so I'm documenting this now before things really get started, and then we'll see which way it goes.

Controlled Digital Lending at the Internet Archive. Right now, the Internet Archive is running the world's biggest experiment in controlled digital lending; millions of books are available to check out online just as you would check out a book from a library. The lending period is (usually) 1 hour, which you can renew if no one else has requested the book. Just set up your free user account at the Archive, and then click on the blue "borrow" button when you see a book you want to read online.

For a nice video explainer, here's Chris Freeland, one of the Archive's librarians: Controlled Digital Lending. You can find out lots more about Controlled Digital Lending at Library Futures: Unlocking the Library's Full Potential.

So, thanks to controlled digital lending, the Internet Archive is giving people access to books online on a scale that is unprecedented. These are not just public domain or open access publications; these are books of all kinds, just as you might find on the shelves of a physical library. Of course, not every book is there, but they are adding new books all the time, and especially for books published in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, the odds are good! (For an example of a bibliography project based on the Internet Archive's holdings, here's a book I just published myself: A Guide to African Folktales at the Internet Archive, which is a free OER published with Pressbooks.)

My hope for MYFest is that the book access provided by the Internet Archive will allow us to build a "virtual bookshelf" of people's favorite books to share so that the books are just a click away for anyone to read!

GOOGLE FORM: Share your favorites. To create our MYFest Library Bookshelf, there's a Google Form you can use to tell me your favorite books: SHARE YOUR FAVORITES. If you can give me the title and author, I'll check to see what I can find at the Internet Archive; so far, almost all the books people have suggested are there! Alternatively, if you know that the book is available from some other full-text book source online, OER repository, etc., you can let me know that address when you submit the form. (Thanks to Brighid, I learned about the Maktaba repository in Tanzania!)

DIIGO BOOKMARKS. When I find a book from the form online, I'm bookmarking it at Diigo with the tag favorite-share, along with a thumbnail image of the book cover. The nice thing about Diigo bookmarks is that they are searchable, so you can see, for example, if there is anything by bell hooks, and there is: Diigo search results. To access the online book, just click on the title you see at Diigo.

PADLET. Then, after I bookmark the book at Diigo, I'm also adding the book and the book cover to a Padlet: MYFest Library Bookshelf. Diigo is good for searching, but Padlet is good for browsing! To access the online book from the padlet, just click on the link that you will find below the book cover.

One of the nifty things about a padlet is that you can embed it pretty much anywhere, so here is that padlet embedded below. HAPPY READING! And please use the Google Form to share your book favorites: anything that you think will inspire, challenge, and sustain us in our MYFest learning journey.