This news is so big, it is probably old news by now. Several libraries and companies have joined together to create the Open Content Alliance.
The Open Content Alliance (OCA) represents the collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technology, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that will help build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content. Content in the OCA archive will be accessible soon through this website and through Yahoo!
The OCA will encourage the greatest possible degree of access to and reuse of collections in the archive, while respecting the content owners and contributors.
The list of participants includes: Adobe, European Archive, HP Labs,
Internet Archive, National Archives (UK), O'Reilly Media, Prelinger Archives, University of California, University of Toronto, and Yahoo!
There are several interesting directions this group is taking.
* Strong participation by non-U.S. institutions (the European Archive, the National Archives in the United Kingdom, and the University of Toronto)
* An Open Content focus that encourages the use of the material in any way. You want to download the book, print it, bind it, sell it? No problem. You want to download 100 books and create your own online collection? No problem. You want to create a personalized website that enables researchers to search, collate, tag, comment, share materials in the OC Archive? NO PROBLEM! So cool...
I can't wait to see what happens next.
Links:
Brewster Kahle's Commentary on the OCA: Yahoo Blog
A New Digital Library Alliance Makes its Debut: Search Engine Watch
Yahoo Works With 2 Academic Libraries and Other Archives on Project to Digitize Collections: Chronicle of Higher Education
Posted by Paul H at October 6, 2005 08:22 AM
