New York Times, October 22, 2007 – Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections.

The research libraries, including a large consortium in the Boston area, are instead signing on with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit effort aimed at making their materials broadly available.

Read the whole article.

This movie may be downloaded from Internet Archive and shared.

The Open Content Alliance’s annual meeting was held yesterday, October 17, 2007 in San Francisco. This movie was shown during the evening presentations. We would like to thank all of the OCA members and other guests who attended and made the day such a success.

Read about OCA programs

The Boston Library Consortium, Inc. (BLC) announced today that it will partner with the Open Content Alliance to build a freely accessible library of digital materials from all 19 member institutions. The BLC is the first large-scale consortium to embark on such a self-funded digitization project with the Open Content Alliance. The BLC’s digitization efforts will be based in a new scanning center, the Northeast Regional Scanning Center, unveiled today at the Boston Public Library.

Read the Press Release.

Internet Archive receives $350,000 grant for its Open Library project from the State of California under the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Program

The OCA Annual Meeting will be oriented toward discussing book scanning, sharing and integrating bibliographic records and implementing digital ILL (Scan on Demand).
View the meeting agenda.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announces the availability of a newly-digitized collection of Abraham Lincoln books accessible through the Open Content Alliance and displayed on the University Library’s own web site, as the first step of a digitization project of Lincoln books from its collection. View the first set of books digitized at: http://varuna.grainger.uiuc.edu/oca/lincoln/

From Betsy Kruger, January 26, 2007.

The University of Pittsburgh Library System (ULS) has started a project to digitize and make freely available the holdings of the Darlington Memorial Library. The library contains one of the finest private libraries amassed west of the Allegheny Mountains during the 19th century. The collection focuses primarily on early American history, especially as it pertains to Western Pennsylvania and the Ohio valley. For example, the Darlington collection holds 11 of the 13 Indian treaties printed by Benjamin Franklin at his shop in Philadelphia between 1736 and 1762.

To complete the project, ULS created an advanced scanning center within its Digital Research Library. ULS is a member of the Open Content Alliance, so, as contents of the Darlington Library become digitized, ULS will contribute the resources to the Internet Archive as well as deliver them through its own Web Portal.

From C&RL News, January 2007.

The Internet Archive announced on December 20, 2006 that it had achieved a milestone in having digitized and made available to date, a total of 100,000 books on its servers. The bulk of these books are from members of the Open Content Alliance. All are available without restriction to public access and enjoyment. A copy of the press release can be seen at the right. Within hours of the release, over 60 news organizations had picked up the AP newswire story. Congratulations to all

CNN.com
Google library: open culture?
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/BUSINESS/12/19/google.books.ap

Seattle PI
A countercrusade to Google’s crusade
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/296561_digitallibrary20.html

KESQ
Google’s book-scanning efforts trigger philosophical debate
http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=5837749&nav=9qrx

The Sloan Foundation announced today, that it has awarded $1 million to the Internet Archive to to help pay for digital copies of collections owned by the Boston Public Library, the Getty Research Institute, Johns-Hopkins Libraries and the Bancroft Library of the University of California. – 2006 December 19.