In my amateur-quest, to retrieve some archive that might have a semblance of approaching moderately large data for a poetry analysis project, I imagined OpenLibrary.org might offer an opportunity to download some poetry that is in the open domain. My first encounter was not encouraging. Thousands of the books listed there under poetry are distributed by the library of congress under what is know as a DAISY lock which requires a key to open and is only accessible to the blind. Imagine a library where a significant portion of the books are locked shut. Aaron Schwartz would not be amused.
In the image below, 7,317 results returned for poetry ebooks, on the first page I can read none.
The 5th book on the list is by the wonderful author Susan Stewart. It is entitled: The Poet’s Freedom
“If this is a library, why can I only read some of the books?
Unfortunately, most books remain unavailable in electronic form.”
