Open Access News

Leaders of the project stressed that no books that are under copyright will be scanned unless the copyright holders give explicit permission. In that way the project hopes to avoid the controversy raised by Google's plan to scan nearly every book at the library of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, even works under copyright. Publishers' and authors' groups have said that Google must obtain permission before scanning copyrighted books, even if it offers only short excerpts of their content, as it plans to do. In fact, one publishing group that has been critical of Google's project, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, has endorsed the Yahoo plan. In a press release, Sally Morris, chief executive of the association, said, "We welcome the launch of the OCA because its approach respects the rights of publishers and other copyright owners." That plan means the Open Content Alliance will be limited mostly to out-of-copyright works -- and to works by publishers who are willing to experiment with giving their content away online. The project will allow generous access to the materials it holds, however, in some cases even allowing users to download the full texts of books. Neither Yahoo nor any other group involved has been given exclusive rights to the content, according to the project's leaders. In fact, the books will be made available in ways that can be searched by other search engines, David Mandelbrot, Yahoo's vice president for search content, said in an interview Friday. The project is modeled on open-source software projects, in which volunteers extend and improve free software. "Open source was a fantastic success; they figured it out," Mr. Kahle said in an interview on Sunday. He hopes the Open Content Alliance "can do the same for open content. We would like to see the great wealth of our libraries get made much more available, where everybody is psyched and everybody knows their place and part....This is a stab at what different organizations should do and what if any restrictions should be made on what is out there." Daniel Greenstein, executive director of the California Digital Library, a project of the University of California system, said, "The focus of this thing is really open access."...Mr. Greenstein said..."One meaningful service for a library community is to build something which enables the libraries to identify instantly what's in there and what's not in there," and then add to the collection...."One of the interests of the group is exploring ways to get people to upload materials directly to the archive," he said...."We're trying to nail bringing public access to the public domain," said Mr. Kahle. "We want people to be able to do great things with the classics of humankind."