I don't think the Internet Archive books are gone for good. They are
just very slow at repairing things. This exact inaccessibility issue
came up before. I sent an inquiry about it to them and they got back to
me telling me that they were aware of the problem and were working on
it. Well, I don't think they were working very hard. Since they did tell
me that they were working on it, though, that encouraged me to check
back now and then to see if they had fixed the problem. One day I
checked back and to my surprise I was able to download a book. It had
taken about a year or so to fix the problem. Then, I don't think it was
more than a couple of months later, it broke again and in the same way.
So here I am back to checking now and then again. What it comes down to
is that you had better not rely on Open Library or the Internet Archive.
When it is working, though - and that seems to be only a minority of the
time - they have some really attractive material. They have extremely
obscure books in accessible format and I can see that a lot of it would
be of strong interest to certain researchers and scholars. Personally, I
just like to revel in reading a book that I suspect that no one else has
read in decades.
On 2/3/2022 8:07 AM, Andy Shields wrote:
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"The Archive" is still listed as an option under "Advanced Search." So I've looked for specific authors whose books have been there, and then, specific titles by those authors. All attempts refer me back to "Advanced Search" without results.
I don't know what format options Bookshare had in place with the Archive in the past. I do know that their large number of DAISY books are now either gone or inaccessible. Attempts to download them from their own website consistently produce the message "Encryption failed", and a person I contacted at Internet Archive two years ago said that "the process was broken."
So: are titles from the Archive still accessible through Bookshare in some way, and if so, how? In spite of their inconsistent quality and scanning errors, they had a lot of books that you couldn't find anywhere else in accessible formats, and it really is a shame if they're all gone for good. If Archive titles aren't available, why is the option still shown under Advanced Search? I'm not annoyed, just bemused. I think I may have sent this question to the list before, but got no response. Thanks for whatever help someone can give me, especially some of you who have a close working relationship with Bookshare.
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