My first question was "What about all the public domain stuff that's already out there?" The home economics archive from Cornell? The Oak Knoll Press collection? The Math Book collection? And probably lots of other ones I don't know about? [Yahoo VP] David Mandelbrot said, "Part of this announcement is to encourage other organizations to participate in the OCA's efforts. We're trying to make a large collection available. We want to a variety of content and make it available in a way that's easily spiderable by search engines." Part of that effort is going to educating archivists and other collection-keepers about digitizing and making content available online in this more open, visible way. All kinds of content? I asked. Yes, they said. Even corporate archives? Yes, though the emphasis would be on culturally-important corporate archives, commercials and so forth. Even multimedia? Absolutely. Even newspapers and periodicals? Yes. Even small and self-publishers, like those who might use the services of Lulu.com? Yes, said Mandelbrot. "We want to work with all kinds of commercial publishers; initially we're working with O'Reilly Media. But this project is open to all kinds of commercial publishers who want to participate, both small and large."...There WILL be a separate page on Yahoo to search the subset of content generated by the OCA. It's too early to tell how much you'll be able to break it down, whether you'll be able to create sets of books, etc. It depends on how much is indexed and what kind of material is indexed. There is no goal in that regard. "We don't have a specific number goal; we're focused on quality," said Mandelbrot. "Our general goal is to make this the richest library of cultural materials available online." It seems like some people are seeing this announcement as a slap at Google and stopping there, but I think there's much more to it. While there's no denying that the Search Engine Wars are back (whoopee!) and Yahoo and Google are not for an instant going to forget each other's existence, and the press release does exude the faintest whiff of Eau De Meowwwww, those are all small facets. This project is breathtaking in its scope. No matter what happens with the Google Print project, the OCA is building something complementary that could be tremendously useful without, perhaps, detracting from Google Print at all.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/03/2005 11:07:00 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.
