Searching endless shelves for a 19th century classic might be a thing of the past with digital libraries making full-text books accessible online and for free. The University of California libraries, including the Kolligian Library at UC Merced, have joined a partnership to build a freely accessible digital library with materials drawn from around the globe....The more than 100 UC libraries will contribute books and resources to build a digitized collection of out-of-copyright American literature. [UC Merced Librarian Bruce Miller] said the 10 UC campuses have about 32 million books on their shelves. The materials will be available from the Web site of the Open Content Alliance. Full text of literature will be available for free to anyone who visits the Web site. Miller said the UC libraries are currently in the selection process to decide which books are the first to be digitized. With the support of Yahoo! Inc., UC library books will be digitized using technology that scans books at the cost of 10 cents per page. Before, the costs to scan archival photographs and documents typically began at $20 per page....Ann Wolpert, president of the Association of Research Libraries, said working with the alliance, academic and research libraries can provide greater access to high value materials and contribute expertise in developing reliable and authoritative collections. "This is an exciting step in the ongoing development of open access solutions for citizens, students, scholars and researchers worldwide," Wolpert said in a news release. "Libraries, publishers, educational institutions, and others must collaborate around initiatives like the OCA to effectively serve their communities in the 21st century." But digitized books aren't anything new to the University of California. In 1997, the university created the California Digital Library to support researchers and students. The difference with Open Content Alliance is that the material will be available free to everyone, not just the university, said Daniel Greenstein, UC associate vice provost and university librarian for the California Digital Library.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/25/2005 11:51:00 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.
