How to Add Borrowed Archive.org Books to Adobe Digital Editions

We all know about Archive.org – an online library of scanned & digitized books contributed by many universities all over the world. Thousands of these books are scanned with the help of Google and Microsoft. We can find very rare books on this website such as the first edition of Opticks by Sir Isaac Newton published in the year 1704. Some of these books are very old and their copyrights are void – these books can be freely downloaded from there. But other books still have valid copyrights and these books can only be borrowed for 1 hour or for 14 days – just as you would in a real-life library.

If you have borrowed a book from Archive.org and want to finish reading it on Adobe Digital Editions, then you can add that borrowed book easily to Adobe Digital Editions in the following manner:

  1. First of all visit archive.org and find a book that you want to borrow. You will have to create a user account for it. One user cannot borrow more than 10 books at a time. After you have found a book (that can be borrowed), open it and choose to borrow it for 1 hour or 14 days.Add Borrowed Books to Adobe Digital Editions
  2. After borrowing a book, scroll down and click on the Encrypted Adobe PDF link to download it. It will download an encrypted file URLLink.acsm. Add Borrowed Books to Adobe Digital Editions
  3. Launch Adobe Digital Editions and select FileAdd to Library from the menubar. Alternatively, you can also use the hotkey Ctrl+O. Add Borrowed Books to Adobe Digital Editions
  4. Choose the URLLink.acsm file that you downloaded in step 2 above. Adobe Digital Editions will start downloading the DRM protected content to your PC.Add Borrowed Books to Adobe Digital Editions
  5. After the content has been downloaded, you can see the newly downloaded borrowed book in the Bookshelves of Adobe Digital Editions. You can see that the book is available only for a limited number of days after which it will stop working.Add Borrowed Books to Adobe Digital Editions

After adding, that book will be available offline – even though it is still encrypted and will expire after your borrow time period is over. For example, if you borrowed a book for 14 days then it will cease to work in Adobe Digital Editions after 14 days.