Brewster Kahle, Digital Librarian and Founder of the Internet Archive, has been working to provide universal access to all knowledge for more than twenty-five years.
Since the mid-1980s, Kahle has focused on developing technologies for information discovery and digital libraries. In 1989 Kahle invented the Internet’s first publishing system, WAIS (Wide Area Information Server) system and in 1989, founded WAIS Inc., a pioneering electronic publishing company that was sold to America Online in 1995. In 1996, Kahle founded the Internet Archive which may be the largest digital library. At the same time, he co-founded Alexa Internet which helps catalog the Web in April 1996, which was sold to Amazon.com in 1999.
Kahle earned a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982. As a student, he studied artificial intelligence with W. Daniel Hillis and Marvin Minsky. In 1983, Kahle helped start Thinking Machines, a parallel supercomputer maker, serving there as a lead engineer for six years. He serves on the boards of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, the European Archive, the Television Archive, and the Internet Archive.
See archive.org and openlibrary.org and blog.archive.org
email at brewster@archive.org
twitter at brewster_kahle.
Horray for the book Archive and its physical backups. While technologies evolve, in the end the text delivery will still depend on mediation from some form of device whose usefulness will eventually expire with the birth of new inventions. Thus the physical book will continue to prove itself evolution’s most hardy keeper of knowledge.
Hi Brewster!
last Friday we met in Berlin and had a lot of fun talking about fixing the housing system. I like your idea of a Stallmanesque solution to flip the system against itself. Remember we met at breakfast in the Arcotel and at night went together to the C-Base? It was great meeting you!
As I told you I know from a Danish friend that they have this sort of social housing system where the members of a certain union own a strictly self regulated house. I haven’t yet found the details about it, but some searching gave me some case studies about Danish social housing, see here an English paper: http://rudar.ruc.dk/bitstream/1800/1208/1/Social_housing_in.pdf
Anyway, let me know how your work on this progresses. In the mean time we continue to set things free in the digital realm.
best,
Wouter Tebbens
Free Knowledge InstituteUnlocking the Knowledge Society
Free Technology Academy>/a>Study Online about Free Technologies
Hello to everybody from Slovakia,
I really love this project as it saves the physical books although they can be posted on the Internet. My question to Mr. Kahle is where can I send you books from Slovakia. I have some books which I translated from English or German into Slovak and vice versa. Can you give me an address, please, and I send you some of my translations.
Thank you and I wish you good luck in your marvellous and ambitious project,
Maria
Hi Maria,
I sent you some information in an email.
Thank you!
What I would love to see is an internet catalog of all the newspaper microphiches that are available at many local libraries. I’d enjoy reading the sports pages of certain baseball seasons especially (like the 1971 MLB season). Since converting microphiche to data might merely involve scanning, it seems simple. I’d even volunteer to do some!
How do I get books to you? I live in West Sacramento and have a lot of books and need to cut down. Many are healing, new age, and counseling/parenting. I’d love to bring them to your warehouse in Richmond.
Thank you!
Hi,
If you are able to bring your books to our San Francisco location on a Friday, you could join us for our weekly open lunch.
Our address is 300 Funston Ave, San Francisco, CA 94118.
If you have any questions – please call 415.561.6767
Dear Brewster,
Good Morning,
I am Brazilian , I was born on 23 decmber 1965 and live in the state of Pernambuco in Recife (city). I was 15 years proprietress of a large bookstore, but had to close it five years ago as sales dropped enormously in the last year and went to work in Sao Paulo in other books. Now I’m back to my town and I was very happy to discover your work in California with books. I love books and are to be congratulated for their work. Take this opportunity to ask if I can somehow contribute to their work, collaborate or work for your company. Anyway thank you for your attention and once again congratulations on your magnificent work with books. Sincerely, Maria Eduarda ( dudamcarvalho@hotmail.com)
How does one donate all one’s books to your collection (Physical Book Collection) posthumously?
Hello Brewster,
I heard about your program from someone who attended the OLA superconference this year. I am in the process of heavily weeding my personal book collection. I have a variety of books, including computer programming books. (All books will be in English)
How can I arrange to have them sent to you.
Thank you
Kim
If you can send them to us in San Francisco, we would love that
300 Funston Ave, San Francisco, CA 94118
Or drop them off at the UofToronto scanning center.
thank you in advance!
-brewster
A relative is looking to donate about 40,000 books left by a recently deceased collector. Am thinking of sending them to you but do not have funds for delivery. Some of the books are in Buffalo, NY area and others are in Carmel, CA. What do you suggest?
Please respond to above email. DB
Donn–
Thank you for thinking of us, and based on the collection, we can pay for shipping. Please contact ginger@archive.org.
-brewster
I’v been trying unsuccessfuly to get to ginger@archive.org. to see what arrangements for shipment can be made. Please communicate with me through my email address. My computer refuses to send anything to ginger@archive.org. Is there someone I can talk with? Donna
odd. I will send this to her.
-brewster
THANK YOU FOR ALL THAT YOUR HAVE DONE!! GREAT ARTICLE IN NY TIMES YESTERDAY
ANY WAY I CAN HELP OUT
Brewster,
I just wanted you to know how wonderful I think it is that you are saving all of these books. I often think of how many people who have read the books before me and what was happening in their lifetime.
I am a self proclaimed information junky and collect old dictionaries. The old dictionaries have the most information and tell more about people of old than the new ones. I am happy that you have found a way to keep the old and still have the new.
Johannes Gutenberg; the inventor of the printing press, would be proud.
I am glad that you are preserving physical books because it is our history and as such is part of our present and future. There is a lot that their existence tells us about the people of the time.
I collect old dictionaries because I can’t stand to see them in the trash.
Johannes Gutenberg would be proud.
I, personally, have a small collection of dictionaries as well. There are sometimes some whacky definitions. I like looking up hyphen.
-brewster
I’ll have to check that out.
Thanks for responding.
‘Caught the CBS News program w/Jim Axelrod – what a fantastic idea! I’ve retired from a college library and for some silly reason, I’ve always felt the importance of saving the actual books – I’m so happy that someone else is not only on the same page (woops, pardon that pun) but has the means/expertise to make it happen. Many thanks, Gwenyth Berry
Hi brewster.
This is heidi.
How the heck are you? I would love to connect and catch up. I would love to hear about how mary is. I have many fond memories about our days in San Francisco.
What is the best way to get ahold of you both.
with love
Heidi
Hi! Mary read your email interchange to me. do write– brewster@archive.org
Just wanted to say THANK YOU! for preserving the printed word in book format! As a child I spent my summers immersed in books, traveling to far away places and meeting all kinds of people. Now in my fifties (don’t tell anyone!) I am still enamored of books and cannot conceive of a day without reading! I have a small personal library and love my books as old and dear friends, re-reading old ones and reading new in-between. Thank you again for doing something I wish I myself could do, or be a part of!
I enjoyed your presentation at the CLA. I am a Librarian and so of course I thoroughly agreed with your desire to digitize but then have universal access. It’s a shame that Google et al. did all that digitizing then restricted access. I do hope we can swing back to a non commodification of information. Good luck.
Trudy Toll
Hayward Public Library
Thank you! It is fun to see all these materials go online.
-brewster