Yahoo to digitize library collections

Now that Google is having to duck and cover on the copyright infringement issue--and the authors guild is up-in-arms--Yahoo will quietly step into the breach.

Here's a snippet of what Scott Carlson and Jeffery R. Young of The Chronicle report about the project:

Yahoo officials say that the project is not a response to Google's partnership with five major research libraries to scan millions of books, and that some planning for the Yahoo project was under way before Google announced its plans last December.

The new archive is called the Open Content Alliance, and it was conceived in part by Brewster Kahle, director of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library. The archive will be doing much of the actual scanning for the project, using a process it has developed in recent years. Libraries involved in the project can have their books scanned by the Internet Archive for 10 cents per page, which leaders of the project say is far below the standard price of scanning.

Other participants in the project are Adobe, the European Archive, the National Archives of England, O'Reilly Media, and Hewlett Packard Labs. The project hopes to attract other libraries and other partners, however, as well as more financial support.

Here's the story as it ran in the Washington Post.

Interestingly enough, the link for Open Content Alliance did not come up on top, for a Google search.

I am a bit irked, though, by headlines such as "Open Content Alliance brings libraries online" (from Macword UK) and wonder if the editor really thinks that libraries just *hadn't thought of it yet* ?

We know the truth, my friends...and I guess this is where we smile as say, "Yes, isn't it wonderful? Great library content, all available online, all the time. A dream come true!"