Google Print for Libraries: the Bold and the Cautious, Library Journal, June 30, 2005. An unsigned news story on a panel at the recent ALA conference in Chicago. Excerpt: ' "This is not an exclusive arrangement," declared Catherine Tierney, Stanford's associate university librarian for technical services. "They're not going to digitize all. They're going to digitize what we give them. This does not preclude deals with others." As for Harvard, "it's a very conservative organization," said Dale Flecker, associate director for systems and planning at the university library. The pilot project will allow the library to look at a range of issues regarding digitization. Flecker said the Google project "is not planned as a preservation project," but Michigan associate university librarian John Price Wilkin said the opposite: "We do think of it as a preservation project. The Google staff are more tentative in handling materials than our preservation and conservation staff." Michigan's staff will digitize materials Google feels are too fragile to scan. Panelists even differed on the ultimate meaning of the project. Said Flecker, "We're not trying to build a digital library. We're trying to add digital stuff to our library." But Wilkin dreams bigger: "I think this will subsume all other efforts [to build a digital library]. It will be the foundation point--we'll use the same infrastructure and build out." '
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/01/2005 11:00:00 AM.
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.
