The OCA, unveiled earlier this month by a group of digital archivists and backed by Yahoo, H-P and Adobe, says it has also signed up Microsoft Corp. and more than a dozen major libraries in North America, Britain and Europe.
Danielle Tiedt, general manager of Microsoft's MSN Search, said the world's largest software maker would fund the digital duplication of 150,000 old books over the next year.
"This is just the start," Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and the organising force behind the OCA. "One hundred and fifty thousand books is just an initial test for Microsoft," he said...."It's interesting to see everyone jumping on the digital library bandwagon," said Doron Weber, a program director at the Sloan Foundation in New York, which provides funding for the Internet Archive, the original organisers of the OCA.
Many university libraries have had separate projects to digitise out-of-print works, but progress has been slow.
That changed when Web powerhouse Google unveiled plans last year to work with publishers and five major libraries on dual projects to make many of the world's great books searchable on the Web.
"Google's push has galvanised everyone else," Doron said.
At the OCA's first public meeting, Kahle spelled out his vision for joining libraries, publishers, printers and hi-tech suppliers to create a universally available digital library.
"If we go and bring universal access to all human knowledge it will be remembered as one of the great things humankind has ever done," Kahle said, comparing the potential of the project to the Gutenberg printing press or putting a man on the moon...."This is really hard. There are reasons why people have never done it. It will take all of the energies of the companies assembled here and many more who have yet to join," said project supporter Gart Davis, president of Lulu Inc., a publisher of out-of-print books that is working with OCA....Backers of the Google Print project have expressed their disappointment that the two groups are not working together. But leaders on both sides say it is only a matter of time before the two library projects find common ground.
"I think it's only a matter of time before we reach agreement," said Rick Prellinger, board president of the Internet Archive and the director of the newly formed OCA.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/26/2005 10:34:00 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.
