About that "emergency library" ...

Things that seem too good to be true sometimes are just that.

NPR had reported on the Internet Archive’s new “National Emergency Library” last week, but as The Digital Reader pointed out this morning, that excitement was ill-advised. (We've since pulled down our post about it.)

It turns out that these books were bootleg e-book editions of books that libraries had donated.

For a deeper explanation of how we got here, check out the National Writers Union’s detailed objections to the “emergency library," which The Digital Reader had shared.