Cheryl LaGuardia, The World in a Database, Library Journal, April 1, 2005. Excerpt: 'Google twinge? I've been an avid Google fan since reading a 1999 Forbes article about the company. However, I feel uneasy about publishing enterprises like Project Torch coming to a dead halt because Google announced its library book digitization project (see LJ 3/1/05, p. 24). My concern, like that expressed by others in libraries and publishing, is that substantial scholarly publishing and digitization projects will not be funded in the expectation that "Google is going to do it anyway." We could lose --or postpone-- digital access to rare and unique material just because Google looms over the digital plain. Have a take on Google's sudden omnipresence in scholarly publishing?'
(PS: It's true that Google's ambitious digitization plan was one reason cited by Oxford University Press and the Mellon Foundation for cancelling Project Torch, which would have digitized backlist scholarly monographs. But in measuring Google's overall effect on other initiatives, remember that the same ambitious plan has stimulated France to launch a large digitization project of its own and to call on Germany, Spain, and Russia to join it.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/02/2005 08:13:00 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.
