After the recent collapse of an ambitious digitizaion project, most of Yale’s books will remain exclusively on shelves — at least for now.
In May, only seven months into what was supposed to be an 18-month-long effort to put images of 100,000 of Yale’s libraries’ books on the Web, Microsoft unexpectedly withdrew funding from its partnership with the University. Although the software giant has pledged to complete scanning of the approximately 32,000 volumes already sent to the scanners, the remaining 68,000 tomes that were part of the original contract will not move off the stacks. ...
Out of the 32,000 books already sent away, the library ultimately expects that about 5,000 will not be able to be scanned because of their age and fragility, said Jennifer Weintraub, the library’s digital collections specialist. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, Kirtas should finish digitization by late 2008, she said. ...
The library is considering other ways of continuing the digitization, Prochaska said. In addition to drawing upon specific endowments set aside for Yale’s library collections, she said, the library will seek new funds from donors and grants. Another obvious alternative is a partnership with Google. ...
... Yale’s library will allow free public access to the digitized books through not only the library Web site but also the Open Content Alliance, a Yahoo-backed nonprofit organization aimed at making digital collections as accessible as possible. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 9/09/2008 04:59:00 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.
