...Through digitisation, we are creating a valuable and enduring resource for scholars and the public alike. We estimate that this digitisation activity to date represents less than 1% of our collection. We want to build on our achievements in this area by maintaining and extending our digitisation programme....
By digitising our collection we aim to:
Open up access to content in the British Library’s collection;
Create a critical mass of digitised content;
Add value to, and open up previously unimagined areas for research;
Support innovative methods of research;
Facilitate the interpretation of our content by others for new audiences;
Transform discoverability of our content;
Make our content more visible and increase use;
Preserve unique, rare and fragile heritage items by digital reproduction and protect vulnerable documents;
Reveal illegible and hidden text or images and permit non-intrusive testing of materials;
Generate income to support our long-term digitisation programme.
Over the next 3 years we will build on our existing digitisation programme. Current projects include the digitisation of:
20 million pages of 19th century literature [approximately 80,000 books];
1 million pages of historic newspapers in addition to the 3m already digitised;
4,000 hours of Archival Sound Recordings in addition to the 4,000 hours already digitised;
100,000 pages of Greek manuscripts....
We want to make the Library’s collection available to as wide a range of users as possible through digitisation and ensure sustainability of the service. We will develop a range of business models including:
Open access, provided free of charge;
Limited open access (where funding allows for free as well as fee-based models);
Mediated access provided through a fee-paid service....
We will protect Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)....
We will reserve our right to assert IPR over the digitised collections we create....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/28/2008 05:39:00 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.
