The Internet Archive this week announced it was partnering with Wikipedia to link the latter’s book citations to the former’s redoubtable library. In future, when users look up a source on page, they may be able to get a digital copy of the book from the Internet Archive.
Both sites collaborated to link 130,000 citations on various articles to 50,000 of the Archive’s digital book repository. When a users clicks on these linked citations, it takes them to a copy of the page on the Archive’s site, where they can see the source directly.
The Archive offers a digital lending library of ebooks — the system lets patrons sponsor a particular book, which is then scanned and added to the system. Anyone who finds a book source from the linked Wikipedia page will be able to see a preview of its content, but will have to pay to borrow it.
Brewster Kahle, Digital Librarian of the Archive, hinted this might be part of a larger effort to incorporate digitized book references into other sites: “What has been written in books over many centuries is critical to informing a generation of digital learners… We hope to connect readers with books by weaving books into the fabric of the web itself, starting with Wikipedia.”
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As much as we all like going to Wikipedia for information, it’s an encyclopedia of sources. Often articles are cited from information only available in books — for example, the citations on the page for the American Civil War are almost entirely from books. While physical resources like libraries are always a great thing to have, not everyone has access to them, and there may be some books available on the IA’s digital library that a local one doesn’t carry.
It’s fitting that the Internet Archive features a quote from a relieved teenage student in its release, because I can see this being a big boon for fledgling researchers. A whole generation of kids instinctively go to Wikipedia first for information, so offering them an easy way to delve deeper into a topic can only help them. Heck, Wikipedia was the go-to for basic info when I was a college student — I can only imagine how helpful these ebook links would have been to me at the time.
The Archive says it’s hoping digitize at least 4 million more books “within the next several years.”
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