France is to launch its challenge to Google's book search next week. French Culture Minister Christine Albanel said today (12th March) that a pilot scheme for the Gallica 2 digitised book project would go live immediately after the Paris Book Fair, which opens on Friday (14th March) and runs for six days.
The project, to be unveiled at the fair, will offer more than 60,000 digitised works from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) and 2,000 from about 50 publishers, some of whom received subsidies for the purpose. The BNF plans to add another 40,000 books imminently, with those copyrighted books supplied by publishers expected to quickly exceed 10,000. ...
Comment. The article doesn't make clear what's different about Gallica 2 vs. Gallica. I can't find an announcement on the Gallica site, and I can't reach the Ministry of Culture site, so I guess we'll find out on Friday.
Update. After reviewing the relevant documents (1, 2, 3), I still can't tell what's new about Gallica 2 or what its relationship is with Gallica.
Update. It appears Gallica 2 is indeed the next version of Gallica, with the intention that the new version will permanently replace the old at the end of 2008. Gallica 2 will add new types of works (such as magazines and newspapers) as well as changes to the interface, including the ability to search full-text inside books. A description in French is here (thanks to Jean-Claude Guedon).
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 3/13/2008 05:33:00 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.
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.
