Back to ISAM and their amazing digital library

The Center for Islamic Studies (ISAM) has a really cool system at its library, and I’m wondering if it would fly in the U.S.

Say you want to photocopy an entire book.  No problem.  They have two guys working there who’ll do it for you really fast.

But if it’s a recently acquired book, chances are it was scanned before reaching the shelves.  In that case, you can bring a flash drive to the photocopy guys and they’ll transfer the whole book for you in PDF format.  If you don’t have a drive, they can burn you a CD or print out the entire thing.  You still pay by the page for the PDF files, but less than for a photocopy.

Today I had three books (about 800 pages) burned onto a CD for less than $10.

What an incredible resource for scholars who don’t want to carry around suitcases of photocopies.  It feels a little sneaky, but if the Center for Islamic Studies is doing it, I figure it’s got to be legit.