...Investing in an open, universal digital commons will help ease the current economic crisis by creating jobs, equipping workers with 21st-century skills, and laying a foundation for innovation and national competitiveness in business and research....
A large-scale effort to digitize library and related cultural-memory holdings would be an effective response to the mounting problems that challenge America. Beyond retraining workers for technology jobs, such a project would bring high-quality historical, scientific, and cultural materials into every home and workplace. That increased access would give businesses, state and local governments, and job seekers a leg up and would enrich education at all levels by bringing the world's collective knowledge to parents, teachers, and students.
But a digital library for the new millennium should reach beyond books. Consider the value of giving every citizen free access to course materials....Add to those materials all the nonclassified studies emerging from government agencies and the results of scientific research conducted at universities and institutes.
Imagine, too, the possibility of developing and applying computational research techniques that would allow users to discover, analyze, and understand relationships among different information sources. The National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health expect that such strategies, made relevant in an open environment, will lead to crucial discoveries in the years ahead....
At the current pace, it would take generations to bring entire libraries and other cultural-memory collections to the open Web. But with an injection of funds, the rate could be quickly increased. On the basis of current practices, we know that in short order, up to 10,000 people could be trained and put to work scanning books, manuscripts, journals, and other materials in library collections. If the scanning encompassed materials outside of libraries, that number would soar.
To create an open, universal digital library of 10 million books would require $300 million....That is a small price compared with the costs of many worthy public-works projects being contemplated....By financing it, President Obama and Congress would put Americans — and knowledge — to work. Generations to come will thank them for their foresight.
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.
