In 2007, the Boston Library Consortium [BLC] joined the Open Content Alliance [OCA], a collaboration of cultural, technology, non-profit and governmental institutions helping to build a permanent archive of digitized text and multimedia content.  Through the BLC’s participation, member libraries are provided discounted rates at the Northeast Regional Scanning Facility located at the Boston Public Library and contribute their digitized content to The Internet Archive, which administers the OCA program.

The Internet Archive is a non-profit organization founded to build an Internet library that provides access for researchers, historians, scholars, those with disabilities and the general public to various collections in digital form.

The BLC libraries’ materials, primarily out-of-copyright titles published before 1923, are scanned on specially designed equipment using a non-destructive process. Within days of being scanned, the digital version are available on the Internet Archive, usually integrated into the digital collections at their local BLC member library and accessible through search engines and other sources.  Scanned materials are returned to their owning library. From June, 2013 through May, 2014, the BLC libraries scanned over 5,300 titles into the Internet Archive.