Google Books and Google Scholar are set to be left as the 'last man standing' in the mass online digitisation game as Microsoft cancels its Live Search Books & Academic programs.
This via Sarah at Librarian in Black:
Libraries and publishers who before had a choice now have to go with Google if they want mass digitization of their materials in an affordable way. Microsoft wanted to make money, and online books were expensive to produce and weren't making money. And yet, Google's projects are going strong. I hope that a non-corporate entity springs up to take up the slack and compete with Google's commercial model.
hmmm...
2 comments:
Surely you're aware of the http://www.opencontentalliance.org/ project Martin?
The Open Content Alliance is in alliance with Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/ and has contributors from all around the world including our own National Library
Thanks neerav. I had totally forgotten about the Open Content Alliance - it obviously receded to the very back of my mind. I haven't been really following the details of these digitisation projects, other than using Google Books occassionally for reference/IL enquiries.
I am pleased that the Internet Archive is involved. I heard Brewster Kahle give a talk at the ALIA conference in 2000, which must have been close to the beginning of the Internet Archive and he was an inspiring speaker with a passion for Libraries.
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