RLG, a not-for-profit organization of over 150 research libraries, archives, and museums announced today that it will be a contributor to and partner with the Open Content Alliance (OCA) (www.opencontentalliance.org), a consortium that is building a permanent archive of digitized text and multimedia content. Generally, textual material from the OCA will be free to read, and in most cases, available for saving or printing using formats such as PDF....RLG's immediate role in this initiative will be to supply the bibliographic information needed to aid in materials selection and description for these searches. RLG's Union Catalog is the premier source of bibliographic descriptions for use in research and research collections management. With records for over 48 million titles, it provides coverage across subjects and material types in almost 400 languages.
Brewster Kahle, digital librarian for the Internet Archive, says, "RLG's help will bring critical expertise and relationships to this ambitious project. Using the RLG Union Catalog to keep track of what has been digitized, cataloging it well and then making it available to all will make sure that the joint efforts of many libraries are widely shared."
James Michalko, president of RLG, adds, "We are committed to the OCA vision. RLG's member institutions want to build out the collective digital library to ensure that scholarship and research is innovative and productive in the future. RLG has a long history of working with its own members to further broad-based initiatives."...Says Michalko, "The OCA can be a rallying point and delivery focus for the long-term efforts of cultural institutions to create a resource that reflects the needs of scholars and students and honors the values of research."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/29/2005 07:33:00 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.
