Rummaging through archives, visiting museums, or learning about the latest research results – you can do it all from the comfort of your home. The German Digital Library, whose creation the German Cabinet approved on December 2, will make it possible.
The stocks and collections of more than 30,000 archives, libraries, museums, and many other institutions will be digitally recorded in the German Digital Library and made available online. ...
The German Digital Library – in German, Die Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek or DDB, for short – will give the general public, not just specialists, access to culture and science. The new portal will make scientific information and cultural documents accessible to everyone from home through a mere mouse click.
The new portal is to be launched in 2011. The German Digital Library will then be permanently integrated into the European Digital Library, called "Europeana." ...
[Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media Bernd Neumann] Neumann was especially pleased that, with the German Digital Library, digital control over German cultural heritage would remain in the hands of the public sector. Also with a view to preserving copyrights, he said that the German Digital Library was an appropriate response to the move by Google to permanently acquire the digital rights to large library stocks for a one-time sum.
The German Digital Library is a joint project of the federal, state, and local governments. The Federal Government is financing development of the main infrastructure with funds from Stimulus Program II. The funds for the continued operation starting in 2011 will be provided on a matching basis by the federal and state governments.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 12/11/2009 03:52:00 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.
