> tech debt and sloppy process at the Archive
It’s a good time to remind everyone that the budget of the Internet Archive — the largest library in the world — is smaller than the SF public library. It has a small fraction of the budget of Wikipedia.
It’s a good time to remind everyone that the budget of the Internet Archive — the largest library in the world — is smaller than the SF public library. It has a small fraction of the budget of Wikipedia.
Probably the best thing they could do would be to fund the creation of a full mirror in a non-US jurisdiction.
And the SF public library has 28 buildings, 6x the employee count, and 6x the budget.
Not sure what your point is, as they provide completely different services. As the judge said, "The Internet Archive does not perform the traditional functions of a library."
Or an archive, for that matter. No grants, explicitly no research services, no oversight and no long-term plan.
Librarians have a formal code of ethics and the Internet Archive fails more than half.
In my country the government has an organisation that archives everything ever released in the country in climate controlled vaults. If somebody wants to read a 17th century newspaper they can.
I am guessing 4, 7 and 9, but which others?
Whether its people suing them, people begging to have personal information removed, or people letting them know credentials have been sitting in the open on Gitlab for over two years, they often do not respond at all. As for "usefully organized resources" well they've overwhelmed. But digitizing 400,000 old records and starting a bank shouldn't be a priority until they get the basics sorted. Like serving torrents that aren't corrupt and missing files.
> 3. We protect each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality...
They leaked 30 million messages from patrons, including driver's licenses and passports.
> 6. We do not advance private interests at the expense of library users, colleagues, or our employing institutions.
They've always played favorites with access. Not only read access but also write access (!) to their databases. They run an entirely separate version of the site for paying institutional clients. Conflict of interest that borders on grifting by employees is not hard to spot.
If I want to access a book (or frankly anything else), chances are I can do so in minutes on the Internet archive — I can’t say the same for my university library. Or the library of Congress.
The internet archive has more materials (and more kinds of materials) and serves more than 10x the number of people (digitally).
I recognize that a community library and the LOC have different purposes from the IA. But the scale is huge — and it is extremely useful in scholarship.
Also: did you used to work there? You know a lot about it, but maybe had a bad experience?