I am a HUGE fan of our library system here in Birmingham. They are great and very rarely do I feel let down. I’m betting the folks in Boston feel the same way about their library system too. Especially with the launch of their Open Library Scan-on-Demand program.
Here are the directions from their site:
…if it’s at the Boston Public Library and hasn’t been scanned yet, there will be a “Scan This Book” button… …we’ll have a librarian go and get the book from the stacks, bring it to our scanning center, and have our team of scanners digitize it page-by-page. Within 3-5 days, you should receive an email follow-up with a link to the newly-digitized copy, complete with PDF, online flip book, full text (using OCR technology) and more, all thanks to your request!
How cool is that? You can tell these people have put a ton of thought into their library system. if you go the site, you can even see which titles are in the process of being scanned. Kudos Boston!
I love the library! Totally geeked out when I realized one of my Election Day buddies from the voting line at my polling place is a librarian. In fact, I love the library so much that, when a book I could have sworn I returned never showed up in the library, I couldn’t even be irritated about paying for the book. (Let me note here that it is entirely possible that I really didn’t turn the book in, although I could swear I did. I am NOT bashing the local library.) I figured heck, if only one book goes missing out of the hundreds I check out, we’re all doing pretty dang well. In my eyes, that $24 was worthwhile to support the library and its mission.