[Web4lib] University of California's 100 LibrariesJoinGoogle Book-Scanning Project

[K.G. Schneider]

> Karen,
> 
> Keep in mind that OCA only launched as a formal production effort
> last October, and the delivery service hasn't even launched yet. Give
> OCA a little more time before wondering if it's dying, please. ;-)

I will, but I can't be the only person who thought this, eh? :-) So, um,
where IS the delivery service for OCA? 

> At the kickoff meeting last October Brewster was very supportive of
> the participating institutions working with  whatever partners needed
> to get our collections digitized.  He did not brand the project as
> one that's in opposition to Google except in its strategy for
> participants to opt-in rather than opting out in terms of the
> inclusion of copyright works.

So we can chalk up the Wikipedia entry on OCA to "wikiality"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Content_Alliance

> My principle concern about UC's participation in Google is that some
> of the UC public domain materials will be found through OCA only and
> some will be found through Google only.  Figuring out what's where as
> a user could get complicated.  It would be nice to see the content
> included in both services, providing multiple ways to discover and
> view the books.

Another concern is whether UC will insist that items digitized in Google
include physical library locations. I am dismayed to go to Google Books and
see libraries "disappeared" through item records that feature the online
book and online booksellers for the physical item, but make no mention of
the physical location of the item in a real-world library. 

I'm not the anti-Google, but I'm hardly alone in watching UC choose this
route and wondering what it means to OCA, let alone what it means to the
user, let alone what it means to the future of information, particularly
when content is sole-sourced in a commercial digital repository that has
been around for less than a decade. 

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com