Matt Marshall, Digitize and conquer, The Mercury News, August 19, 2004 (free but annoyingly extensive registration required). Excerpt: "Brewster Kahle, founder of San Francisco's Internet Archive, burns with a mission. He wants to ensure universal access to all human knowledge. And now he thinks that goal is within our grasp. The emergence of cheap data storage technology has made what once seemed a pipe dream distinctly possible -- digitizing and storing the entire Web, the world's 100 million books, 2 or 3 million audio recordings and millions more software programs, TV shows and videos. 'Storing this is a no-brainer,' Kahle said. He's making what has been digitalized so far freely accessible at www.archive.org....The Library of Congress houses about 28 million books, and he estimates he can scan and digitize each book for $10 a piece. That would cost about $280 million, or the equivalent of half the Library's annual budget....Sure, getting copyrighted material has its challenges, especially music and videos. But he's chipping away where he can. Driving Kahle is the conviction that the world's information is a common good. In that spirit, he also has asked Google to furnish him with a copy of its database, say with a six-month delay so Google's competitiveness doesn't suffer. Google has yet to grant his request."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/19/2004 11:56:00 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.
