The Allen County Public Library provides almost 8,000 titles from its genealogy collection for patrons to browse, view and download to their personal computers for free. An additional 2,088 popular fiction and non-fiction titles are available for leisure readers to download.
The genealogy texts are the most popular digital books that the local library offers. More than 1 million digital-text versions of genealogy materials have been downloaded since June 2008.
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The library sought grants and financial help from its foundation to pay for the digital scanning and making the documents searchable. The non-profit Internet Archive scans the materials and hosts the Web site, which draws about 1 million visitors a month, Witcher said.
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Subscribing to Overdrive costs the library $21,000 a year. In addition, the library pays a monthly $3,500 fee. Witwer spends $1,500 a month to buy about 30 titles, which are typically less expensive than hard copies of books, officials said.
The library introduced the Overdrive service in spring 2008, Witwer said, and circulation took a leap this summer.
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