Public Domain Books from Triangle Research Libraries Headed to Archive.org

Submitted by Blake on February 26, 2008 - 8:57am
Topic: 
Books
Technology
Internet
Electronic Publications

You may have heard about Google's initiative to scan lots of university book collections and make them available through the Google Books service. Less well-known is an initiative by the Open Content Alliance (OCA) to also scan books, but to make them available to any search engine. The Triangle Research Libraries Network recently announced that they -- that is to say the libraries at Duke University, North Carolina Central University, North Carolina State University, and UNC -- will be joining the OCA initiative and making public domain books from university libraries available online.

Comments

Submitted by Walt on February 26, 2008 - 10:49am.

Well, I suppose--but not for lack of trying. The Open Content Alliance has been around since at least October 2005. I've written about it here and here and here, not to mention here and here..

A phrase search in Bloglines yields 2,720 posts, in Google (as a phrase) a somewhat-meaningless 208,000. (507,000 in Yahoo and 226,000 in Live Search...that's interesting.)

Hmm. And 112 stories on LISNews.

What does it take for OCA to become well known, if it isn't already?

Submitted by Blake on February 26, 2008 - 11:47am.

Get bought by Google.

Submitted by Walt on February 26, 2008 - 2:06pm.

But I'll assume it is a joke.

I'm not particularly fond of Brewster Kahle's anti-Google Book Search comments; I don't think they serve anyone particularly well. But OCA is well known, appears to be digitizing to higher standards, and has a tiny little firm in Redmond involved (along with some other unknown companies like Adobe and Yahoo!).

I realize that once a website dominates an area, it can't possibly lose that position (as AltaVista can tell you), but Google is not the universe. Even if they are keeping real estate prices nice and solid in my neighborhood... (OK, one house *did* take more than a week to sell. But only one.)

Submitted by Blake on February 26, 2008 - 3:32pm.

I forgot my ";-)" didn't I? Of course it is, though you gotta admit, it would sure make it more popular!