Mike Wendland, U-M's entire library to be put on Google, Detroit Free Press, December 14, 2004. On the Google deal with the University of Michigan. Excerpt: 'The massive project means that within a few years, people doing research about practically anything -- whether for a scholarly paper, a high school project or a family tree -- will be able to consult U-M's collections online almost as easily as they could if they were sitting in the landmark library building on the university's central campus...."This project signals an era when the printed record of civilization is accessible to every person in the world with Internet access," said U-M President Mary Sue Coleman. "It is an initiative with tremendous impact today and endless future possibilities."...The size of the U-M undertaking is staggering. It involves the use of new technology developed by Google that greatly speeds the digitizing process. Without that technology -- which Google won't discuss in detail -- the task would be impossible, says John Wilkin, the U-M associate librarian who is heading the project. "Going as fast as we can with the traditional means of doing this, it would take us about 1,600 years to do all 7 million volumes," he said. "Google will do it in six years."..."If we were to do this job ourselves, it would probably cost us $600 million," Wilkin said. "That's just the human cost of preparing the material for scanning, packing it up and sending it out to vendors and then quality-control checking of the results. This is easily a billion-dollar effort."'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/14/2004 03:16:00 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.
