Chris Freeland

Director of Open Libraries, Internet Archive · Founding Technical Director, Biodiversity Heritage Library

St. Louis, Missouri, USA (working with Internet Archive, San Francisco)

Internet Archive (Open Libraries)

Biodiversity Heritage Library (Founding Technical Director)

Washington University in St. Louis (former)

Missouri Botanical Garden (former)

Biography

Chris Freeland is a digital librarian, biodiversity informatician, and open access advocate who has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of library science, information technology, and the mission of making knowledge universally accessible. He is the Director of Open Libraries at the Internet Archive, a position he has held since joining the organization, in which he oversees the Archive's work to partner with libraries worldwide to digitize, lend, and preserve books. Before the Internet Archive, Freeland was an Associate University Librarian at Washington University in St. Louis, managing the university's digital initiatives and related services. Earlier still, he spent years at the Missouri Botanical Garden, where he founded and led the Center for Biodiversity Informatics and served as the founding Technical Director of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. He holds an MS in Biological Sciences from Eastern Illinois University and an MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is also, outside his professional life, a cyclist and, with his husband (also named Chris), co-founder and operator of South Compton Soap Company.

Biodiversity Heritage Library: Founding Technical Director

Before his work at the Internet Archive, Freeland's most significant institutional creation was the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) — an international consortium of the world's leading natural history libraries working together to digitise their historic scientific literature and make it freely available for open access research. Freeland founded and led the Center for Biodiversity Informatics at the Missouri Botanical Garden and served as the BHL's founding Technical Director, building the technical infrastructure that would allow millions of pages of taxonomic and natural history literature — many from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and otherwise inaccessible outside physical library visits — to be digitized, indexed, and placed online. The BHL's collections document centuries of scientific observation of the natural world, and have become essential infrastructure for contemporary biodiversity research. Freeland's technical work on the project included the development of geocoding and taxonomic name-finding tools, image format standards for biodiversity collections, and the underlying systems for the BHL's partner data-sharing model. He has also been involved in informatics work for the Tropicos botanical information system at Missouri Botanical Garden. His work at Missouri preceded and directly informed his approach to the larger-scale digitization challenges he would take on at the Internet Archive.

Internet Archive: Open Libraries and Controlled Digital Lending

As Director of Open Libraries at the Internet Archive, Freeland leads the organization's program to partner with libraries — public, academic, and special — to select, source, digitise, and lend the most useful books in copyright as well as those in the public domain. The program's ambition, as stated on its website, is to bring four million books online through purchase or digitization, building what the Internet Archive describes as the online equivalent of a great, modern public library. The Open Libraries project works specifically with US libraries and organisations serving people with print disabilities, recognizing that Controlled Digital Lending is not only a convenience but a lifeline for readers who cannot access physical library collections due to distance, disability, or cost.

The central technical and legal mechanism Freeland has championed at the Internet Archive is Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) — a model under which a library that owns a physical book digitises it, lends the digital copy to one user at a time, and withholds the physical copy from circulation during that loan, maintaining a strict one-physical-copy-to-one-digital-loan ratio. CDL uses the same digital rights management software publishers use for commercial ebook lending, enforces time limits on loans, and is designed to replicate the functional constraints of traditional library book lending in a digital context. Freeland has argued consistently that CDL is a necessary mechanism for equity in education: that physical library closures, distance learning, and the uneven availability of commercial ebook licenses mean that without CDL, vast numbers of students and researchers are cut off from materials that are legally owned and physically held by libraries.

The pandemic gave CDL its most consequential test. When physical libraries across the United States and Canada closed in March 2020, the Internet Archive opened the National Emergency Library—a temporary expansion that removed waitlists and allowed unlimited simultaneous loans to support the sudden surge in remote learners and researchers. Two months later, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House filed a copyright lawsuit against the Internet Archive, challenging both the National Emergency Library and the broader CDL model. The Internet Archive immediately suspended the National Emergency Library; the lawsuit continued, targeting CDL directly. Freeland became one of the Internet Archive's principal public voices throughout the litigation, speaking at press conferences and giving media interviews to explain the library's position and to contextualize what was at stake for libraries and their patrons.

In March 2023, Judge John Koeltl of the Southern District of New York ruled for the publishers, finding that CDL as practized by the Internet Archive did not constitute fair use. The Internet Archive appealed. In September 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the lower court's ruling. The decision was a significant legal setback for CDL as a model, though it left unaffected many other Internet Archive services including interlibrary loan, citation linking, access for the print-disabled, text and data mining, ebook purchasing, and ongoing book donation and preservation. Freeland responded to the appeal ruling by reaffirming the Archive's commitment to its library mission and to continuing the services the ruling did not reach. Throughout the litigation he articulated the core equity argument for CDL: that when economist witnesses in the case were actually asked to measure harm to publishers' ebook markets, their own experts declined to attempt it — and that independent economists found no measurable effect on sales from the Archive's digital lending.

Projects and Partnerships

Open Libraries / Open Library

The Internet Archive's program for digitizing and lending books in partnership with libraries worldwide. Open Library maintains a user-curated catalogue of over 16 million books; the Open Libraries project focuses on the digitization, acquisition, and CDL lending infrastructure.

openlibrary.org

Biodiversity Heritage Library

Founding Technical Director

International consortium digitizing the historic natural history literature of the world's leading natural history libraries for free open access. Freeland built the founding technical infrastructure and led the Center for Biodiversity Informatics at Missouri Botanical Garden that anchored the project.

biodiversitylibrary.org

National Emergency Library

March–June 2020

A temporary pandemic-period expansion of Internet Archive lending that removed waitlists for digital books while physical libraries were closed. Directly triggered the Hachette v. Internet Archive copyright lawsuit. Closed two months after opening when the suit was filed.

Controlled Digital Lending advocacy

Freeland has been a leading public advocate for CDL as a legal and equitable practice, presenting at library conferences, giving press interviews, speaking at congressional briefings, and co-authoring the CDL position articulated by the Internet Archive throughout the Hachette litigation.

controlleddigitallending.org

Current Activities

Freeland continues as Director of Open Libraries at the Internet Archive, overseeing the program's partnerships with libraries—including academic libraries, public libraries, and institutions serving print-disabled readers — to grow the digitization pipeline and expand the availability of books online. He also writes for the Internet Archive blog on digitization, access, copyright, and the future of library services in a digital age, and regularly speaks at library and information science conferences on CDL, open access, and the intersection of technology and library mission. He remains one of the most prominent practitioner voices in the ongoing debate over Controlled Digital Lending's legal status and its importance to equitable access — a debate that the Second Circuit's ruling in 2024 has sharpened rather than resolved. Outside work, he has noted a side interest in making and selling artisan soap through the South Compton Soap Company, the small business he runs with his husband.

Chris Freeland

Director of Open Libraries
Internet Archive
300 Funston Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94118, USA (Internet Archive HQ)

Based in: St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Education: MS Library and Information Science, University of Missouri-Columbia · MS Biological Sciences, Eastern Illinois University

Internet Archive blog: blog.archive.org/author/chrisfreeland

Open Library: openlibrary.org  |  BHL: biodiversitylibrary.org

LinkedInMediumInternet Archive Blog