Kirtas scanning initiative – invest in a book
By Paul Biba
Picked this up from the Librarian’s News Wire. It certainly is a very clever idea. Anything that helps get books digitized is great. However they have an extremely confusing website which doesn’t work very well with Firefox. More work needed.
Invest in Knowledge is a new, innovative—patent pending—initiative introduced by Kirtas in conjunction with the company’s Digitize on Demand program and retail Web site, www.kirtasbooks.com. The program allows anyone to subsidize the digitization of the world’s knowledge one book at a time.
Anyone who purchases a book to be digitized, through the Invest in Knowledge initiative, from Kirtasbooks.com will receive a reprint of that book, as well as 5% of all future sales of that book through that web site. Consumers can invest in as many books as they would like.
“This is such a tremendous opportunity for the average consumer to help support and fund the digitization of some amazing collections of books,” noted Tom DeMay, vice president, business development. “So not only are consumers doing the right thing, but if they want to ask ‘what’s in it for me?’ We can give you a great answer. Several titles or one popular book could provide a nice return on investment over time, creating a true lifelong investment in knowledge.”
“This is the first mass digitization program that will make unique collections available to the public in a way that increases access, achieves preservation, and benefits at the same time the library, its patrons and the general consumer,” said Kirtas Founder and CEO Lotfi Belkhir. “And it does so without compromising quality or the ownership rights of the libraries to their digitized content.” To learn more about Invest in Knowledge, invest in a book or set up an account, visit www.kirtasbooks.com.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Paint me cynical, but I always reserve a smattering of suspicions whenever someone claims to be doing something philanthropic for the good of all … and patents the process.
July 15th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
I first want to thank you for your feedback. Do to the overwhelming responds to our “Invest in Knowledge” program we had a busy weekend. We updated both hardware and software as well as navigation of the site.
The search is now extremely fast and the navigation was designed to make navigation much more intuitive. Please visit Kirtasbooks.com and let us know if you like the enhancements.