The Cebu center is located in Mandaue City, Cebu in the Philippines. It first opened in 2018 and Internet Archive contracts with Innodata, a data engineering company based out of New Jersey. Internet Archive paid Innodata $1,588,738 in 2018 as a part of this contract.
Scanners have scanned at least 1,059,208 books (but likely significantly more) in the past four years at the Cebu facility. The scanning rates at other facilities in the US and UK have decreased significantly since the Cebu center has opened.
According to an IA blog post (the only time Innodata is mentioned in IA communications), scan operators scan LPs that are sent over to the facility: “An Innodata worker digitizes 12 LPs at a time, setting turntables to play and record by hand, then turning each record over to the next side. Since each LP is digitized in real time, it takes a full 20 minutes to record an average LP side. By operating 12 turntables simultaneously, the team expects to be able to digitize ten LPs per hour.”
Despite the over 500 workers at the Cebu site, we received no responses to interview requests or our survey link. When we requested information about Cebu from IA management, they declined to comment and participate further in our project.
Various videos posted on Innodata's social media offer glimpses into work at the center: