McGill University Library is pleased to announce a partnership
with Kirtas Technologies and its Canadian partner Ristech, which
will allow students, faculty and the general public to request to
have books scanned and made available through the new Digitize on
Demand program. ...
The program will offer books that are difficult to find, because
they are generally out of print. They are also in the public
domain, meaning that there are no copyright restrictions. ...
Kirtas currently has 12 partnerships with universities and
public libraries to make special collections available for sale
online, with McGill University the first to participate in Canada.
... Distribution rights
are non-exclusive so the books can also be made available through
other distribution channels at a library’s request. McGill
University Library will also make a digital copy of each scanned
item available through its catalogue. ...
Comment. The announcement says McGill will "make [the digitized books] available". Does that mean OA?
Update (from Peter, 6/6/09). Kirtas is apparently using the same business model at McGill that it used at the University of Pennsylvania: covering its costs by selling POD editions and leaving the OA decision to its university partner. Penn has not yet decided to offer OA and neither has McGill. Klaus Graf reports by email that, currently, none of the 11 books in the McGill-Kirtas program is OA.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 6/03/2009 09:06:00 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.
