The internet has changed our access to books in many ways. I’ve been thinking about three of the more obvious ones:
- The internet has made interlibrary loan very easy. At Stockton, just go to the Interlibrary Loan Screen, found under the link to Interlibrary Services on the Library main page. Sign up for an account. If you already have one, you can usually call for an article or book right from the on-line database you are searching. So the internet has made borrowing books a pretty seamless event.
- The internet has also done a great job of providing books that are out of copyright — usually before the mid 1920s. Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive let you read books on-line or download them in various formats (pdfs for storage and reading on computers; epubs and kindle formats). I am particularly fond of the Internet Archive. We’ll be using it in the Research and Punctuation courses and I’ll refer to it in the Irish course.
- For those who, like me, still like the book as physical object, there are lovely on-line resources for book sleuthing, in particular Abebooks and Alibris. Here you will find plenty of very old books for sale that are not yet scanned into internet archives — lovely ephemera, too. Buying from booksellers on Abe and Alibris, sellers who know their materials, also assures you of a reasonable transaction. I’ve seen an awful lot of $10 books offered for $150 as rare and very special on Ebay.