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qingcharles • today at 3:18 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

Can't speak for everyone. I'm very gently scraping a lot of libraries for public domain periodical scans. The scans often exist nowhere else, or not in the same quality. Sometimes I find a certain library has perhaps the only known remaining intact copy of a periodical or a specific page.

The problem with the libraries is that all these scans are behind walls, so while the texts are public domain nobody can easily access them. I'm trying to liberate them and re-upload them outside the walls.

Until recently a lot of libraries would allow you to remotely sign up for a library card, but in the last 12 months almost all of them have reverted to having to bring ID in person to the library to validate your account, which puts the brakes on things.


Replies

NoMoreNicksLeft • today at 5:47 PM

I've been scraping Overdrive for the last few months, so that I can identify every book/magazine title they hold. About halfway done (13 million ids to check). I can slurp down full magazines from their preview function. Books I can only get through my local library's Overdrive service, and they only have a tiny subset of those.

Are you doing newspapers?