[A]s president of the New York Public Library, which is in the process of scanning into computer form as many of its books as possible, Dr [Paul] LeClerc can see a future when he will never have to leave his office and travel across the world to get what he needs. "All the paradigms are shifting at the speed of light because the way of delivering information is changing so fast - it's a revolution as profound as the invention of the printing press." It is all because of a global battle to turn the web into a vast book repository that was sparked last year when Google announced a deal with some of the world's great libraries, including the NYPL, Harvard and Michigan universities to "digitise" books. The European Union, which baulked at the idea of an American company acting as librarian to the world, announced its own plans for an online library and last month Microsoft said it had struck a deal with the British Library to make digital copies of some of its world-famous holdings. This week the US Library of Congress raised the stakes further with plans, again with the support of Google, to build a World Digital Library of books, video, photographs and other media that can be replicated digitally.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/26/2005 09:17:00 PM.
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.
