I also hated that stunt. It undermined their mission, damaged all their goodwill and caused legal hassle. And all the while all these books were readily available to anyone who wanted them via Anna's etc.
They should have stayed on the right side of that line.
COVID was a particularly treacherous period for a lot of humans. Replying as myself, not my employer. I’m not offering an opinion about the program, as I was not directly involved; I’m only noting circumstances that I think are often under-considered or misrepresented.
1. The state of access.
Tens of thousands of public schools and libraries in the United States and across the globe were suddenly mandated to shut their doors, leaving many students, parents, and teachers to fend for themselves, to learn from home, and unequipped with access to the physical resources many needed. Meanwhile, thousands of public libraries across the United States who had these resources were forced to closed their doors, meaning tens of millions of books the public had paid for became unavailable. Many of these public good organizations appealed for some way to solve the unique access challenges created by these unprecedented circumstances, which connects to point number 2.
2. Who was involved.
The details regarding how a decision is reached, and whether its made independently or unilaterally or with input and comment, are relevant when forming an opinion. In my experience, many people opine on this topic before researching this point. In 2020, more than 100 public institutions and libraries who were affected by COVID, joined in endorsing some temporary way to offer students, parents, and educators relief by connecting them with resources they had lost access to:
The COVID library wasn't even the first time they had book lending on the Archive. I remember at least a couple of different prior borrowing mechanisms. But besides books, JS/WASM emulators were added a long time ago to run game console ROMs directly in the browser on any collection that happens to contain them. There's probably other examples, but nothing else comes to mind right now.
