Supporting OCA (Open Content Alliance)

Brewster Kahle is one of the big people behind the Open Content Alliance (OCA – “Building a digital archive of global content for universal access).  The idea with this was initiative was to scan public domain books and have that content universally accessible by all.  Brewster is known for the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine, but this blog is a good source for Open Access news, especially as it relates to happenings in the United States.

In a recent This Week in Tech (TWIT 144) podcast, Brewster (as a special guest) discusses some of the issues with relying on Google initiatives to digitize books (like Google wanting to lock down public domain so content that contributed to scanning is available only through the Google search engine).  Also, the fact that archive.org is actually the host of these digitized books and a better situated host for many reasons.  Many of the companies like HP, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google participated in OCA — Yahoo! funded some early scanning initiatives, Microsoft funded scanning for 300,000 books — but each company had its own motives for participating and Brewster comments that its quite Orwellian to rely on companies to host the public domain of knowledge.  Now fundind has ended from Microsoft and the likes and OCA will need to look MacArthur Foundation and Sloan Foundation and other similar public funding opportunities, but the project has moved from about thirteen initial libraries scanning to more than 80 libraries participating in OCA.

For digitized books, see the Internet Archive – Text Archive and The Open Library.

The big discussion right now is related to the “Orphan works” legislation now in the U.S. Congress. It could be really good or really bad depending on how the law is implemented.  Something to watch over the next few months.