#1. If you thought the internet has nearly all the information anyone could ever want, consider this: it's about to start adding high-value content that previously was not online, or that was undiscoverable because it was behind a "pay wall." Several initiatives are particularly noteworthy. Google Scholar, launched in 2004, is making premium content from some of the most important academic and scholarly sources discoverable via its search engine. While users will still need to pay for the content once they find it (at terms set by each content provider), the discoverability of such content enhances the value of the internet enormously, and could increase the number of customers for premium content. At the same time, universities and research institutions are becoming publishers by implementing institutional repositories that make articles from their researchers available online directly as a complement to aggregators. These types of initiatives will alter the value proposition of intermediaries, such as aggregators, as search engines take over the content discovery role that such intermediaries have provided heretofore. Another Google initiative is even more ambitious. It will begin digitizing the physical collections of five top libraries....The project eventually will allow an internet user to search inside millions of volumes, seeing the pages exactly as they appear in the original works, including illustrations, charts and photos. While this project won’t bring much content online this year, eventually it will add rare content to the internet and expand the frontiers of information available online.
#8...A number of major city libraries and state library consortia have cut deals to allow their patrons free access to premium databases from such providers as Thomson and EBSCO, among others. Importantly, these deals allow library patrons to access the databases from outside the walls of the libraries -- via the internet, with a library card number. So far, public access to such databases seems to remain a well-kept secret. Sooner or later, though, savvy politicians will try to take credit for it and the word certainly will get out.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/26/2005 01:42:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
