Microsoft has committed to paying for the digitization of 150,000 books [for the OCA] in the first year, which will be about $5 million, assuming costs of about 10 cents a page and 300 pages, on average, per book, said [Danielle Tiedt, general manager of search content acquisition at MSN]. Yahoo has said it will pay for digitization of 18,000 books, according to Tiedt. Internet Archive, a nonprofit formed to offer access to historical collections that exist in digital format, will digitize the material. Microsoft's MSN Web site will launch its MSN Book Search service next year and will experiment with different business models, such as pay per page, monthly subscriptions, selling e-books and advertisements, Tiedt said. "The business model will change, depending on whether (the book) is out of copyright or in copyright," she said. MSN will offer more than the simple search of the books. For instance, the company may offer services such as allowing people to annotate works, create discussion groups and move text into productivity applications, Tiedt said. Microsoft and Yahoo may or may not share books with each other that have been digitized, she said. "We are working on global collections."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/26/2005 09:30:00 AM.
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.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
