The Lineages and Inheritances of Shadow Libraries and their Documentation

Shadow libraries, that is, illegal massive repositories of books of all kinds, are of course prone to takedowns by police and disappearance from the internet. In recent days, one of the most prominent shadow libraries, Library Genesis (libgen), was taken down and its archive removed from public consumption. The takedown of LibGen was no massive shock. Indeed, several projects were already continuing LibGen's legacy.