Bay State College’s Boston Campus has donated its entire undergraduate library to the Internet Archive so that the digital library can preserve and scan the books, while allowing Bay State to gain much needed open space for student collaboration. By donating and scanning its 11,000-volume collection centered on fashion, criminal justice, allied health, and business books, Bay State’s Boston campus decided to “flip entirely to digital.”

You can read more about the move at http://bit.ly/3ugfpQ3.

Comment: OK, now here is a proposal I believe is worth pondering: Should we promote the same kind of moves for most (or all) genealogy libraries?

Most of the smaller genealogy libraries are woefully underfunded. Also, access to these libraries is a problem if the would-be patron lives a long distance away, such as in another country. Wouldn’t it be better to place all books that may legally be copied or digitized online and make them available 24 hours a day, to every place in the world? (Optionally, the books could also be placed back on the shelves after being digitized for local use.)

Yes, I would even pay a reasonable amount to access them remotely. That would be a lot cheaper than what I have paid in past years for travel to remote locations, hotels, restaurant meals, and more expenses I don’t even want to contemplate.

Yes, I am in favor of digitizing all sorts of things and make those digital images online. Is it a perfect solution? Absolutely not but I am sure that it is better than the present system of storing a few things here, a few things there, and lots of things not documented or not available at all because of travel constraints.

What do you think?