Monday, October 22, 2007

Digitizing content and the Open Content Alliance

The NY Times published an article today about how several large libraries have rebuffed offers from Google to scan their collections, aiming for broader distribution of their content by preferring to go with the Open Content Alliance. The OCA has recently reached an agreement with the Boston Public Library to scan content, and will be scanning 136,000 books from the Library of Congress. This content will be indexed and made available through the OCA website and Yahoo!

It is laudable that several institutions are trying to make their content available to the widest possible audience. They are standing on principle, disagreeing to cede complete control to a private entity.

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