Back in July of this year, they removed a lot partner courses developed in collaboration with other organizations or educational institutions. These included Math & Science courses in collaboration with the California Academy of Sciences and the Stanford School of Medicine, and Arts & Humanities courses in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History .

Except it’s not just partner courses, Khan Academy has also removed a lot of test prep courses, with MCAT to soon join these retired courses in 2021, only extended due to popular demand.

But why now? Why when online education is more crucial than ever, due to the ongoing covid-19 pandemic? It’s safe to assume that this might be due to partnership deals expiring, but Khan Academy gives us a more fundamental reason: being out of focus.

Khan Academy is retiring some content that isn’t aligned to our focus on Kindergarten through early college (K-14) core academic courses and select tests. 

…

Over the last few years we’ve been deepening our focus on core academic content and seen usage of that content grow considerably. By retiring content that is outside this focus area, our team will be able to devote more care and energy to maintaining and improving this highly utilized content. 

The page goes onto mention how Khan Academy is a relatively small non-profit organization and as such they need to make the most of what little resources they have. Yet the decision to remove these courses isn’t due to hosting costs, so much as maintenance. Khan Academy hosts a good deal of the course videos on their YouTube channels, for no cost. The cost arises from the fact that they feel obligated to respond to comments, to try and answer any questions, to listen to feedback so long as these videos are still up. As such, they have taken this decision to reduce their opportunity cost here by focussing on core topics, which they believe students need more.

Discontinuing online courses is nothing new, big MOOCs such as Udemy and Udacity have also retired a sizable chunk of their earlier courses for similar reasons. At the very least, Khan Academy’s support page offers alternatives for students who might be affected by the removal of a particular course, which is definitely a step in the right direction we should hope more educational platforms to follow.

What is disheartening however, is seeing how these massive online platforms are financially struggling when more students depend on them than ever before. During these past few months serious investments have been made to improve remote education, yet counterintuitively funds are being funneled into accelerating digital transformation for more traditional institutions or to expand the educational services of various companies, instead of supporting these already mature platforms.

Recently the World Bank approved a $160 million loan to Turkey, for the country to be able to improve the infrastructure of their national online education services and accessibility to said services. Education companies who are not primarily focussed on online teaching such as Chegg, a company instead more focussed on textbooks which also just so happens to offer limited online tutoring, have seen their stock value go up significantly. While these investments are bringing genuine improvements in educational infrastructure and extending outreach to more students, it really is a shame that investors and donors aren’t as keen on funding platforms which have already been doing this for the past decade.

If there is a silver lining to this story, it’s that there are people who see the merit in Khan Academy and other such online platforms: students and volunteers. Where schools, teachers, governments and investors still fear to tread, the generation who grew up with MOOCs are starting their own educational platforms.

One such second generation project is Kolibri, an NPO which aims to make online resources (such as those from Khan Academy) available offline in regions which don’t have stable access to internet. As a bonus, it doubles as an archive in the event that those courses are no longer accessible online.

So as the saying goes: When one door closes, another opens. And that doesn’t just apply for Khan Academy who have closed one door to open another, but to all of us through available alternatives just waiting to be found out!

Events from this point on are fortunately a lot clearer. The Internet Archive would begin to regularly release statistics and updates on the NEL[1]. Some of the highlights here include the IA reaching out to educational institutions in hopes of seeking a compromise[2] and cooperation between the IA and the National Library of Aruba when the island nation too was hit with the outbreak[3].

Reconciliations and apologies aside, not everything was sunshine and rainbows. Despite the statements from the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers bringing attention to the flaws of the NEL, the only repercussion taken on the IA’s part so far, was making the opt-out form for authors more visible, and later silently excluding books published within the last 5 years.

Dissatisfied, the AAP would persuade Senator Thom Tillis, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, to issue a warning to IA’s founder, Brewster Kahle[4]. The exchange between the two [5] would later receive attention from a number of outlets, including Publisher’s Weekly[6].

As readers might recall from part 2, a lot of the news surrounding the NEL was transmitted through authors across social media. These remarks from figures the public holds upon a pedestal, led to fans stepping into the defense of their favorite authors, sometimes turning to extremes.

IA would end up hiding individual endorses from their public statement, starting April 23[7]:

Update: April 23, 2020 We have received threats of violence and intimidation targeting endorsers. For the safety and security of information professionals in our community, we are making the list of endorsers private.  To date we have had more than 200 individuals endorse, continuing daily. You can support the suspension of waitlists via the form at https://forms.gle/gTc2dA4b4cWwGWfZ8.

Another victim was author Chuck Wendig, who became the target of brigaded harassment for his harsh critique of the NEL, eventually leading him to protect his Twitter account[8].

The following months were relatively quiet, as interest in the NEL wained, with not too many mentions outside of the IA’s blog and social media accounts. This was the case until June 1, when publishers who were still unsatisfied with the NEL decided to file a complaint[9].

Plaintiffs Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley (collectively, “Plaintiffs” or “Publishers”) bring this copyright infringement action against IA in connection with website operations it markets to the public as “Open Library” and/or “National Emergency Library.” Plaintiffs are four of the world’s preeminent publishing houses. Collectively, they publish some of the most successful and leading authors in the world, investing in a wide range of fiction and nonfiction books for the benefit of readers everywhere. All of the Plaintiffs are member companies of the Association of American Publishers, the mission of which is to be the voice of American publishing on matters of law and public policy.

Defendant IA is engaged in willful mass copyright infringement. Without any license or any payment to authors or publishers, IA scans print books, uploads these illegally scanned books to its servers, and distributes verbatim digital copies of the books in whole via public-facing websites. With just a few clicks, any Internet-connected user can downloadcomplete digital copies of in-copyright books from Defendant.

Excerpt from the lawsuit filed against the IA[9]

IA, who had taken note of the case against them[10], announced that they would be shutting down the NEL prematurely[11].

Within a few days of the announcement that libraries, schools and colleges across the nation would be closing due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, we launched the temporary National Emergency Library to provide books to support emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation during the closures. 

We have heard hundreds of stories from librarians, authors, parents, teachers, and students about how the NEL has filled an important gap during this crisis. 

Internet Archive Founder Brewster Kahle

Activists who’ve seen a possible existential threat to the IA in this lawsuit are now banding together to ensure the survival of IA’s public domain collections[12]. These containing everything from snapshots of Google in the 90’s[13], to footage from political ad campaigns[14], to episodes of long forgotten TV shows such as Death Valley days[15].

No matter how events play out from here on out, I think there’s more than a few lessons for all of us archivists out there. But the most important of these was getting to see how much damage miscommunication can cause.

Making the books they made available, the way that they made them available, the IA was obliged to at least see if the idea was welcome. It should not have been by solely checking if there was a clear need, by also by consulting the relevant parties. It didn’t help that their statements and clarifications were often buried under discussion and speculation thereof.

Sometimes you only get a few words to say, so instead of complaining you ought to make the most out of them…

Let’s build a digital system that works.

Internet Archive Founder Brewster Kahle, as he bids a farewell to the NEL[11].

Sources:

[1]http://blog.archive.org/tag/nel/
[2]http://blog.archive.org/2020/04/27/forging-a-cooperative-path-forward-university-presses-national-emergency-library/
[3]http://blog.archive.org/2020/05/18/when-an-island-shuts-down-aruba-the-national-emergency-library/
[4]https://publishers.org/news/senate-intellectual-property-chairman-addresses-internet-archives-national-emergency-library/
[5]https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1249519103632695302
[6]https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyright/article/83027-internet-archive-responds-to-senator-s-concern-over-national-emergency-library.html
[7]https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vQeYK7dKWH7Qqw9wLVnmEo1ZktykuULBq15j7L2gPCXSL3zem4WZO4JFyj-dS9yVK6BTnu7T1UAluOl/pub
[8]https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig, retrieved June, 17.
[9]https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6935704/4388-1.pdf
[10]https://blog.archive.org/2020/06/01/four-commercial-publishers-filed-a-complaint-about-the-internet-archives-lending-of-digitized-books/
[11]https://blog.archive.org/2020/06/10/temporary-national-emergency-library-to-close-2-weeks-early-returning-to-traditional-controlled-digital-lending/
[12]https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dzg8n/archiving-the-internet-archive-sued-by-publishers
[13]https://web.archive.org/web/19991012140308/http://google.com/
[14]https://archive.org/details/political_ads
[15]https://archive.org/details/cbak_000003

When we last left off, disease had run rampant across the US. A national emergency was declared; schools, workplaces and any and all public buildings were closing down rapidly. The stage was set!

On March 24, in response to the ongoing crisis, the Internet Archive officially launched their National Emergency Library initiative[1] in hopes of supporting displaced learners.

As described in part 1, the IA had already been loaning books for almost a decade at this point, and hosting books in the public domain for even longer. The one difference the NEL initiative brought was a major change in how these loans were given.

Normally, under the IA’s Open Library [2] project, books are first digitized into e-books either through the IA’s own collections or partner libraries.

This library brings together all the books from Phillips Academy Andover and Marygrove College, and much of Trent University’s collections, along with over a million other books donated from other libraries to readers worldwide that are locked out of their libraries.

Open Library Director Chris Freeland[1]

These books then become available for the borrowing of a single user, for 14 days. At the end of 14 days, the online or downloadable version of the loaned e-book will stop functioning. Furthermore users are limited in how many books they can borrow at a time, to deter them from borrowing books trigger-happy.

This means that each and every loanable book could only be lended to a single person at a time, much like a physical library. If all copies of the same book run out, then no one else can borrow a copy of said book, until one of the already borrowed copies is returned. People who would like to reserve a book, could then join a waitlist, to have a priority in receiving the book once it has been returned.

What the NEL initiative changed in this formula, was to introduce a temporary suspension to waitlists. Throughout the duration of the NEL, users would be allowed to receive their books immediately without having to sit through the waitlist. Ergo, multiple people could now share the same copy of the same book, no longer hindered by the IA’s limited inventory.

Then what was the justification for such a dramatic change? Fair Use. Readers might recall a certain public statement we’d mentioned in part 1, namely the Public Statement of Library Copyright Specialists: Fair Use & Emergency Remote Teaching & Research[3]. Authored unanimously by copyright specialists and librarians from higher education institutions across the US and Canada, the address serves as a means to raise public awareness regarding how remote teaching can steer clear of violating copyright:

… One critical feature of copyright law is fair use, a flexible users’ right that allows the use of copyrighted works without permission. It accommodates a wide variety of circumstances, including new and rapidly evolving situations. In the words of one of our colleagues, April Hathcock, “fair use is made for just these kinds of contingencies.”

To analyze whether a particular use is fair, courts balance four factors.

Of these four factors, the first and fourth are the most relevant:

The “heart of the fair use inquiry” lies in the first factor – the purpose and character of the use. Courts favor uses where the purpose is to benefit the public, even when that benefit is not “direct or tangible.”…

…The benefit to the public in providing remote coursework is obvious when it enables teaching to continue in the face of social distancing measures or quarantine, or when access to physical library materials is impossible. The public benefit of these measures is without a doubt of at least equal importance as in these cases.

In the light of this factor, IA has been able to claim that they are able to do precisely just that, providing access to library materials, via their own collections or those from partner libraries, despite these means otherwise being physically inaccessible.

The fourth factor is “the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.” This factor “requires a balancing of the benefit the public will derive if the use is permitted” versus “the personal gain the copyright owner will receive if the use is denied.” While in normal circumstances there may be licensing markets for some items, the spontaneity of a move to remote teaching under emergency circumstances reduces the importance of this factor. Checking for and relying on licensed alternatives bolsters the case for fair use under the fourth factor, but lack of time to check for licenses should not be a barrier to meeting the needs of our communities.

And in light of this factor, IA chose to act early, when some publishers were still working to set up their own alternative distribution methods. That being said, within the NEL announcement they do acknowledge the situation of the rights-holders, and implore readers who have the means to purchase the books or e-books instead. Additionally, they do give authors whose books are not a part of the NEL collection to opt-in, and those who might feel a conflict of interest to opt-out.

We recognize that authors and publishers are going to be impacted by this global pandemic as well. We encourage all readers who are in a position to buy books to do so, ideally while also supporting your local bookstore. If they don’t have the book you need, then Amazon or Better World Books may have copies in print or digital formats. We hope that authors will support our effort to ensure temporary access to their work in this time of crisis. We are empowering authors to explicitly opt in and donate books to the National Emergency Library if we don’t have a copy. We are also making it easy for authors to contact us to take a book out of the library. Learn more in our FAQ.

Excerpt from the NEL announcement [1]

Whether these analyses were sound, to help build support for the NEL, IA also set up a public statement of their own[4], similar to the aforementioned Library Copyright Specialists statement, which they even cited as a “relevant document”. Said public statement has currently been endorsed by over 120 educational institutions and libraries including The MIT Press, Duke University Libraries and the National Library of Aruba.

The first to catch wind of the NEL were libraries, which is understandable seeing their close ties with the IA. The Library Journal[5] and the American Library Association[6] would tweet the news of the NEL from day 1.

From then on, libraries across the country, from New York[7] to Colorado[8] were more than ready to refer folks who couldn’t visit to the NEL.

It was only a matter of time before the National Emergency Library began to operate as a de facto International Emergency Library, as libraries from not only the US but from across the world offered it as an alternative to their readers during lockdown. These include libraries from Argentina[9], Spain[10] and Portugal[11], just to name a few.

These posts and shares by libraries across social media permitted the NEL to spread by word-of-mouth, it was only a matter of time before it caught the attention of the press. However, the power of word-of-mouth publicity would prove to be a double-edged sword, as each successive commentator abridged and omitted more and more details, turning everything into a messy game of telephone.

Jill Lepore of the New Yorker wrote a very positive story on the NEL[12]. Calling it a gift to readers everywhere, she compares it to an initiative during wartime:

… It reminds me a little, though, of the Council on Books in Wartime, a collection of libraries, booksellers, and publishers, founded in 1942. William Warder Norton, of W. W. Norton & Company, was chair of the council, which issued a statement declaring that “books are useful, necessary, and indispensable.” F.D.R. agreed, writing to Norton, “a war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships.” The council picked over a thousand volumes, from Virginia Woolf’s “The Years” to Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep,” and sold the books, around six cents a copy, to the U.S. military, as Armed Services Editions, books for soldiers and sailors and Army nurses and anyone else in uniform. As Yoni Appelbaum wrote in The Atlantic a few years ago, the council effectively gave away more than a hundred and twenty million books—their very best titles—and created a nation of readers.

Colin Dwyer of NPR also wrote a story portraying the NEL in a positive light[13], as well as reminding readers that the IA’s non-loan collections of public domain books were, and would remain, accessible.

International press also played their part, the Jakarta Post also ran a story on the NEL, via Agence France-Presse, garnering almost a thousand shares at the time of writing this article[14].

Press attention would really bolster the NEL’s popularity to new levels, however not everyone was happy about the attention the NEL was receiving. On March 27, the Author’s Guild of America[15] and the Association of American Publishers[16] both issued statements condemning the NEL as opportunism in times of crises.

IA is using a global crisis to advance a copyright ideology that violates current federal law and hurts most authors. It has misrepresented the nature and legality of the project through a deceptive publicity campaign. 

The statement by the Author’s Guild is a mixed bag, it practically opens up with acknowledging the bad blood between themselves and the IA, indicating a previous conflict of interest which shakes the credibility of some of their claims. One particular example being an unsourced claim that the IA ships millions of books to China for illegal scanning.

A strong point made is the point on the unusual model the Internet Archive’s Open Library follows; the books are neither eBooks licensed to publishers, nor are they hardcover books, but rather something in between, thus there is no legal framework to fit them in. But by removing the one copy at a time rule, the system is now virtually duplicating these books, DRM or not, this is a way of reproducing the books and a potential violation of copyright.

A strong emphasis is made on the economic struggle that authors were facing at the time, a point which was excluded from the stories which ran in the New Yorker and NPR. Although, it is imperative to note that as stated above, the NEL announcement does encourage any readers who have the means to support authors by purchasing their books. Claims made regarding the IA’s apathy to the economic struggle of authors suggest that whoever authored this statement had in fact not fully read the IA’s own NEL announcement.

Pessimistically, the NEL is dubbed as a “solution without a problem”. A claim made is that there is no such need for access to free books as publishers were more than ready to provide rental or purchase eBook versions or deliveries, linking readers to a list of resources curated by the AAP[17]. The issue here is turning a blind eye to what the L in the NEL stands for, the NEL ultimately emerged as a response to public library shutdowns, a channel of access to free books. And the IA weren’t merely a random group who styled themselves as an alternative once libraries were shutdown, but an organization which worked closely with libraries to help bring accessibility to their collections.

It is the height of hypocrisy that the Internet Archive is choosing this moment – when lives, livelihoods and the economy are all in jeopardy – to make a cynical play to undermine copyright, and all the scientific, creative, and economic opportunity that it supports.

AAP President, CEO Maria Pallante [16]

The AAP’s statement was a lot more brief. Readers are instead directed to their collection of “approved” solutions [17] and a page describing why the IA’s “Controlled Digital Lending” system is fundamentally and categorically flawed[18].

Looking through the AAP’s collection of items, one will notice that there is actually freely accessible material for students who might not have had to physically purchase these during a regular school year. However, these are often in fact geo-restricted. Cengage offers free access to their entire digital platform and all of its ebooks, but only higher education institutions in the US are eligible[19]. Pearson similarly offers free access to some of their material, with varying accessibility for the US, UK and Canada[20]. This means that in a lot of cases, international students will still be unable access these materials, or have to purchase them. This has made the NEL, which does not restrict access to educational material based on geographical region, the only solution for a very real problem overseas.

Following these statements, a lot of authors would take a stance against the NEL. It was only a matter of time before the positive coverage turned negative.

The most famous of these, was a story by Alexandra Alter of the New York Times, the first major publication to bring attention to the authors’ plight[21]. Many of them were displeased to see their books being uploaded without their permission, with no royalties attached. Attention was also brought to the Author’s Guild’s and AAP’s comments on the matter.

Colin Dwyer of NPR, ended up writing another story [22] where he apologized for neglecting the situation of the authors. A portion of the story is also dedicated to a lengthy response published by IA a few hours ago, as a rebuttal to misconceptions about the NEL[23]. Mention is also made of how a lot of “brick-and-mortar” libraries had already turned to lending licensed eBooks.

In the coming days the NEL and IA continued to receive backlash from the likes of Copyright Alliance[24] and the Science Fiction Writers of America[25].

At the height of its popularity, people were no longer hearing about the NEL from the news, but from their favorite authors… It’s important to note however that contrary to the portrayal in the media, not all authors were opposed to the idea of the NEL for the same reasons. In fact, some celebrities and authors have endorsed it!

Astronaut Michael Collins[26], John Hopkins SAIS professor Thomas Rid[27] and, science fiction author Cory Doctorow[28] have commended the initiative for making the inaccessible, accessible.

Doctorow himself once coined a law, Doctorow’s First Law, which states: “Any time someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you, and won’t give you a key, they’re not doing it for your benefit”. [29] The metaphor here is a caution about DRMs, Doctorow strongly believes that any form of distribution where the author has no say, is against them. He willingly consents to the idea of having his books featured in the NEL, and his key in this case seems to be the opt-out form IA provides[30]. Yet other authors haven’t felt as “free”.

Authors such as Neil Gaiman[31] and Paige Christie[32] who have been willing to give permission for reading or recording of their books during the COVID-19 crisis, took offense to inclusion by default.

Some authors never even noticed the opt-out option, in particular, a tweet by Alexander Chee[33] went viral:

Authors such as Alisha Grouso [34] equated the initiative to piracy, as authors found themselves unable to receive royalties they were entitled to. Lauren Hough [35] suggested getting rid of non-public domain books altogether, Meg Waite Clayton [36] suggested they could circumvent all of this by just paying the license fee like any other eBook distributor.

For better or worse, these comments only attracted even more attention to the NEL and IA, which peaked in its search interest for the last 5 years.

(If you cannot see the above image, click here)

On March 31, the already shaky IA servers experienced a major outage due to the surge in user traffic!

This single moment of silence, spoke a lot about the entire NEL controversy. The NEL had brought the IA more attention than they’d received in years. A lot of the misconceptions or misunderstandings of the initiative were, simply put, due in large part to the word-of-mouth spread bringing in audiences who knew nothing about IA prior to the NEL. And on the IA’s part, they were clearly not prepared for this much attention. A lot more steps could have been taken to patronize writers instead of alienating them.

It was what it was. And so, after repairs the NEL would continue to operate for the next few months…

Stay tuned for the final part, where we’ll talk about the aftershocks of the NEL’s turbulent launch and the path which eventually led to its premature closure!

Sources:
[1]http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-emergency-library-to-provide-digitized-books-to-students-and-the-public/
[2]http://blog.archive.org/2010/06/28/digital-lending-library/
[3]https://docs.google.com/document/d/10baTITJbFRh7D6dHVVvfgiGP2zqaMvm0EHHZYf2cBRk/preview#, retrieved June 15, 2020.
[4]https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vQeYK7dKWH7Qqw9wLVnmEo1ZktykuULBq15j7L2gPCXSL3zem4WZO4JFyj-dS9yVK6BTnu7T1UAluOl/pub, retrieved June 15, 2020.
[5]https://twitter.com/LibraryJournal/status/1242444354389716992
[6]https://twitter.com/ALALibrary/status/1242515783697281025
[7]https://twitter.com/UAlbanyLibs/status/1243613765557350400
[8]https://www.instagram.com/p/B-NgQKSFUhJ/?igshid=3e65cbkik6qc
[9]https://www.instagram.com/p/B-o9wfRnoor/?igshid=1bnspey7lffzr
[10]https://www.instagram.com/p/B-Y781NIX09/?igshid=1kmqck01cfgc1
[11]https://www.instagram.com/p/B-ZXEVUhmD9/?igshid=2avmaz58v296
[12]https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-national-emergency-library-is-a-gift-to-readers-everywhere
[13]https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/26/821925073/national-emergency-library-lends-a-hand-and-lots-of-books-during-pandemic
[14]https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2020/03/28/national-emergency-library-releases-over-14-million-digital-books-for-free.html
[15]https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/internet-archives-uncontrolled-digital-lending/
[16]https://publishers.org/news/comment-from-aap-president-and-ceo-maria-pallante-on-the-internet-archives-national-emergency-library/
[17]https://publishers.org/aap-news/covid-19-response/
[18]https://publishers.org/news/statement-on-flawed-theory-of-controlled-digital-lending/
[19]https://www.cengage.com/covid-19-support/
[20]https://www.pearson.com/news-and-research/announcements/2020/03/pearson-uses-global-reach-to-provide-learning-tools–expertise-f.html
[21]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/books/internet-archive-emergency-library.html
[22]https://www.npr.org/2020/03/30/823797545/authors-publishers-condemn-the-national-emergency-library-as-piracy
[23]http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-responds-why-we-released-the-national-emergency-library/
[24]https://copyrightalliance.org/ca_post/the-emergence-of-copyright-looting/
[25]https://www.sfwa.org/2020/04/08/infringement-alert-national-emergency-library/
[26]https://www.instagram.com/p/B-muOKMj5Py/?igshid=1kbx2j6y1k5gj
[27]https://twitter.com/RidT/status/1242803919258091523
[28]https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1242515471510851585
[29]https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/cory-doctorow/article/44012-doctorow-s-first-law.html
[30]https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1242515473507315712
[31]https://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/1244087854063468544
[32]https://twitter.com/PaigeLChristie/status/1245360152833908745
[33]https://twitter.com/alexanderchee/status/1243584733369503746
[34]https://twitter.com/AlishaGrauso/status/1245030068105048064
[35]https://twitter.com/laurenthehough/status/1244837118431481856
[36]https://twitter.com/internetarchive/status/1244792891186106369

Yesterday we published a timeline of events pertaining to the Internet Archive’s infamous National Emergency Library project. Today, and over the course of the next few days, we’ll be going over this sequence of events in further detail, in hopes of constructing a resource for any person or party who is trying to wrap their head around the situation.

In order to understand what the National Emergency Library initiative actually is/was, we need to talk a bit about why the idea for something like a national emergency library emerged at all.

Life as we once knew it began to change, back in January. The reasons as to why should be obvious to any reader, but for the sake of future reference it all began with widespread cases of pneumonia being reported in China. The COVID-19 crisis which started as a small outbreak, would over the course of only a couple of months grow into a full pandemic!

Grim as these past days might seem, the silver lining is that the level of international collaboration and co-operation in attempting to mitigate the crisis is monumental. Perhaps never before in human history, have so many people, from all corners of the world, worked as intensely to combat a global disaster.

The Committee welcomed the leadership and political commitment of the very highest levels of Chinese government, their commitment to transparency, and the efforts made to investigate and contain the current outbreak. China quickly identified the virus and shared its sequence, so that other countries could diagnose it quickly and protect themselves, which has resulted in the rapid development of diagnostic tools. 

From the Statement on the second meeting of the International Health Regulations (2005) Emergency Committee regarding the outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) [2]

Educational[3][4] and governmental institutions[5][6], and even publishers[7][8] have worked to make resources available and accessible to researchers across the world, and anyone else curious for that matter. The WHO even has a neat web page where they link to a lot of these databases, as well as their own[9].

Although there isn’t yet a readily available vaccine for the disease, the research thus far has already proven imperative in monitoring the disease’s spread and finding solutions to keep it under control.

All this being said, the disease continued to spread… By early March, with over a 100 000 cases across 141 countries, the disease was declared a pandemic by the WHO[10]. Soon after; workplaces, schools, public buildings and places of worship all across the world began to shut to down, in line with social distancing policies.

The sheer scale of precautions taken worldwide was nothing short of astounding, by the end of the month more than one-third of the entire world population was under some form of isolation[11]. Much as researchers had figured out that a transition to online communication was the best option they had, so did the rest of the world who were now unable to leave their houses[12]. The office went virtual and embraced remote working, the classroom embraced distance education. But this transition did not happen overnight!

On March 13, only a few days after the WHO’s statement, a National Emergency was declared in the US[13]. Though some schools had already started closing down, following this emergency declaration, states began ordering schools to close which led to the rapid closing (of the facilities) of thousands of schools across the country[14]. Of course, this meant that if these schools were to continue their education, with limited or no access to their facilities, they would need the proper resources[15].

Another proclamation which was made precisely on March 13, was a unanimously authored public statement by librarians and copyright specialists across the US. This announcement to raise public awareness, was meant to clarify what rights educators and students may exercize during emergency remote teaching and research[16].

The United States is in a time of crisis. As of this writing, more than 200 universities and colleges have moved to remote teaching. These moves aim to promote public health by slowing the spread of the disease, while maintaining at least some of the important functions higher education plays in teaching, learning, and research. We have heard concerns that copyright may pose impediments to a rapid shift to remote instruction, or conversely, that copyright is not relevant. While legal obligations do not automatically dissolve in the face of a public health crisis, U.S. copyright law is, thankfully, well equipped to provide the flexibility necessary for the vast majority of remote learning needed at this time.

Excerpt from the Public Statement of Library Copyright Specialists: Fair Use & Emergency Remote Teaching & Research [16]

The significance of this public statement might not be immediately evident, but it is important to note that chronically it occurred right here, on March 13, and would serve as a foundation for a number of projects in the coming weeks, including the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library initiative.

Some of our readers might be wondering who or what the Internet Archive is anyway. It’s all in the name, the Internet Archive originally started as a non-profit archive of the internet, way back in 1996[17]. Starting with websites, over time the IA has branched off into different forms of media; including old software, movies, television programs and books. Initially, the website only aimed to host public domain media, since 2010 they’ve also been running a digital lending program[18] . This has lead to them embracing something of a library identity, in fact it might interest you to know that the IA is currently recognized as a library by the state of California.

The IA’s initial response to the COVID-19 crisis, wasn’t too different from that of other libraries or archives. In February, they led the way in creating a Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) [19] collection for documenting significant news, events and daily life during the pandemic, similar to projects being run by other libraries such as the DC Public Library[20]. And similar to the BBC Archive’s COVID-19 collection[21], they’ve also been actively curating collections to help people cope with the stress of the crisis[22].

However, despite these parallels, it didn’t take long for the IA to realize the unique position they were in. While other institutions were struggling to find ways to go virtual, IA already was, for the most part.

On March 9, Chris Freeland, the director of the Open Libraries project[23] which is pivotal in the IA’s acquisition and loaning of new books, authored a “call-to-action” blog post, affirming readers that IA’s book lending would continue to operate, unaffected by the crisis and assuring any libraries, which might potentially have to close down during the crisis, who might be interested in making their collections available online that IA was ready to provide any technical support they could[24].

Returning to where we left off, after the pandemic and national emergency declarations, another significant date was March 17. IA announced a new “Share a Course, Not a Virus COVID-19 Initiative“, with the aim of promoting distance education[25].

But more importantly, later into the day, the American Library Association made a statement recommending libraries across the US to close down[26]:

It is very difficult for us to put forward this recommendation. Libraries pride themselves on being there during critical times for our communities. We are often the only institutions to remain open during times of crisis. Service and stewardship to our communities are core to our profession. 

We have weighed the situation of our country and what has happened in other countries around the world. The health of our library workers and the communities we serve is of utmost and equal importance. Libraries are by design unable to practice social distancing to the degree recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health authorities. Keeping libraries open at this time has the potential to harm communities more than help. We underscore the importance and need to come together in this crisis and commit to ensuring our libraries, which provide so many important services to our communities, do not serve as vectors for a fast-moving pandemic.

Excerpt from ALA Executive Board’s recommendation to closing libraries to the public[26].

Somewhere around this time, the IA silently increased their limit on the number of books a user could borrow at a time from 5 to 10, quite possibly for the first time in their history. Something was brewing…

One week later, on March 24, Open Libraries Director Chris Freeland would make another announcement[27]:

To address our unprecedented global and immediate need for access to reading and research materials, as of today, March 24, 2020, the Internet Archive will suspend waitlists for the 1.4 million (and growing) books in our lending library by creating a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners.

And so the NEL was born…

Stay tuned, for the next part where we talk about how news of the NEL became the news of the world, and what people had to say about it!

Sources:
[1]https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html, retrieved June 14, 2020.
[2]https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/30-01-2020-statement-on-the-second-meeting-of-the-international-health-regulations-(2005)-emergency-committee-regarding-the-outbreak-of-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov)
[3]https://www.cambridge.org/core/browse-subjects/medicine/coronavirus-free-access-collection
[4]https://global.oup.com/academic/category/medicine-and-health/coronavirus/?cc=us&lang=en&
[5]http://medjournals.cn/COVID-19/index.do
[6]https://phelibrary.koha-ptfs.co.uk/coronavirusinformation/#Journals
[7]https://www.elsevier.com/connect/coronavirus-information-center
[8]https://novel-coronavirus.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
[9]https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/global-research-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov
[10]https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19—11-march-2020
[11]https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-pandemic-timeline-history-major-events-2020-3?op=1
[12]https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/05/1063272
[13]https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-declaring-national-emergency-concerning-novel-coronavirus-disease-covid-19-outbreak
[14]https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/map-coronavirus-and-school-closures.html
[15]https://wayback.archive-it.org/13529/20200316064145/https://www.ed.gov/coronavirus/
[16]https://docs.google.com/document/d/10baTITJbFRh7D6dHVVvfgiGP2zqaMvm0EHHZYf2cBRk/preview#
[17]https://archive.org/about/
[18]http://blog.archive.org/2010/06/28/digital-lending-library/
[19]https://archive-it.org/collections/13529
[20]https://www.washingtonian.com/2020/04/16/dc-public-library-archive-this-moment-zoom-screenshots-quarantine-diaries/
[21]https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/covid-19_collection/zrfq2sg
[22]https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/16/7-things-to-do-if-you-cant-leave-the-house/
[23]http://openlibraries.online
[24]https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/09/controlled-digital-lending-and-open-libraries-helping-libraries-and-readers-in-times-of-crisis/
[25]https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/17/sharing-courses-not-viruses-educational-innovators-respond-to-covid-19/
[26]http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2020/03/ala-executive-board-recommends-closing-libraries-public
[27]https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-emergency-library-to-provide-digitized-books-to-students-and-the-public/

As a retrospective today, and an anecdote for the future, we’ve thrown together a timeline of events so far:

A lot has happened these past few months, and there is very much certainly a whole lot more to be said. Which is why we’ll be doing an in-depth analysis of the situation in the coming days. Stay tuned!

Sources:

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jggndUgvhrk
[2]https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200121-sitrep-1-2019-ncov.pdf?sfvrsn=20a99c10_4
[3]https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200211-sitrep-22-ncov.pdf?sfvrsn=fb6d49b1_2
[4]https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/naming-the-coronavirus-disease-(covid-2019)-and-the-virus-that-causes-it
[5]https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19—11-march-2020
[6]https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-declaring-national-emergency-concerning-novel-coronavirus-disease-covid-19-outbreak
[7]https://docs.google.com/document/d/10baTITJbFRh7D6dHVVvfgiGP2zqaMvm0EHHZYf2cBRk/preview#
[8]http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2020/03/ala-executive-board-recommends-closing-libraries-public
[9]http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/announcing-a-national-emergency-library-to-provide-digitized-books-to-students-and-the-public/
[10]https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-national-emergency-library-is-a-gift-to-readers-everywhere
[11]https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/26/821925073/national-emergency-library-lends-a-hand-and-lots-of-books-during-pandemic
[12]https://publishers.org/news/comment-from-aap-president-and-ceo-maria-pallante-on-the-internet-archives-national-emergency-library/
[13]https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/internet-archives-uncontrolled-digital-lending/
[14]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/books/internet-archive-emergency-library.html?ref=oembed
[15]https://www.npr.org/2020/03/30/823797545/authors-publishers-condemn-the-national-emergency-library-as-piracy
[16]http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-responds-why-we-released-the-national-emergency-library/
[17]https://twitter.com/internetarchive/status/1244792891186106369?s=20
[18]https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200414/11273744299/senator-tillis-angry-internet-archive-helping-people-read-during-pandemic-archive-explains-why-thats-wrong.shtml
[19]https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6935704/4388-1.pdf
[20]https://blog.archive.org/2020/06/10/temporary-national-emergency-library-to-close-2-weeks-early-returning-to-traditional-controlled-digital-lending/