Google Print and Open Content Alliance.

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Author: Quint, Barbara bquint@mindspring.com

Students who study how innovations change the world should find the current efforts to digitize the world's past--specifically its book literature--fascinating and instructive. At present, two approaches dominate the scene, up from one just a few months ago. Google Print has been joined by the Open Content Alliance (OCA), a loose-knit coalition hacked by Yahoo!, the Internet Archive, and a network of libraries, publishers, academics, and other large content providers.

OCA has taken an alternative approach to the challenge of digitizing the world's archives, one that could prove more durable and more flexible than Google Print, particularly in avoiding copyright challenges. But, most importantly, the emergence of OCA means that the concept of "total digital archiving" has been endorsed by those able and willing to commit resources capable of doing the job. If Google's fiery resolve to complete Google Print should flicker. OCA appears ready to pick up the torch. In fact, while Google now has to deal with a lawsuit filed by The Authors Guild, OCA's policies now avoid any confrontation with intellectual property disputes. Its current digitization focuses on public domain material (either material so old that copyright has elapsed or material under the "copyleft" licenses of the Creative Commons).

But, before letters to the editor from Thomson Gale, ProQuest, and longtime library digitizers start piling into Information Today's in boxes, let me define the scope of this discussion to operations that combine universal digitization--or at least as much of the universe as implementers find open to the process--with delivery of that digitized content to as many people as might have an interest in it.

Clearly, ProQuest (Early English Books Online, Historical Newspaper series. Digital Vault material, etc.) and Thomson Gale (18th Century and 19th Century Collections Online, Shakespeare Collection, etc.) have conducted massive digitization projects. But the marketing strategies of these firms tend to confine access to content to friends, colleagues, and clients of those signing the vendors' checks. In contrast, OCA--though widely publicized as a Yahoo! initiative--has firm policies that mandate open access to all, including Google and other competitor search engines.

Conversations with OCA participants indicate other interesting differences from the Google Print approach. While Google's "go get it all" approach remains attractive, OCA's approach has its own appeal. OCA's network picks its targets, defining what needs to be done and why. OCA announcements focus on the "vetted," librarian-tested focus of their collection policy. Most importantly, the networking approach has tapped into library acquisitions budgets, introducing a collaborative collection-building element.

Instead of treating digitization as a special project issue (an outlier activity relying primarily on grants or "extra" money), OCA's approach encourages libraries to consider the digital archive as part of their primary collections, even though its creation involves sharing "acquisition" funds with other institutions and sharing the results of the expenditures with the world and its Web.

Sadly, at least for vendors, part of the motivation for libraries and academic institutions getting into this venture probably comes from a desire to stop paying vendor license fees. One OCA librarian with whom I spoke said librarians were tired of paying vendors "annual rental on their backlists." If librarians digitize their own collections and plug any holes with digitized content from sister organizations, they can produce competitive, top-quality products that, once completed, will see a budgetary sunset.

But, when it comes to analyzing competitive advantage, academic institutions might develop some reservations, at least initially. Possessing a top-quality collection of digitized material under proprietary access control could constitute an important asset in competition for distance learning success. Librarians have a professional ethic that pulls them toward the broadest possible access, but academic managers might not operate from such noble altruism.

Of course, a broader vision might see that the wider the spread of available, academic-quality sources, the faster the growth of the market for distance learning. This market could extend into areas of lifetime learning and personal growth rather than just the traditional, age-specific learning paths. As long as vendors selling into the academic market have such cautious licensing provisions, the vendor community might not be involved when it comes to distance learning initiatives.

OCA also promises more flexibility in formatting and other technical developments. Already, the book content in the program comes in downloadable PDFs. This format is much more versatile than Google Print's page image content, which users can only read while connected to Google. This is true even for Google Print's public domain material (not that I'm complaining about reading books on Google). However, beggars can't he choosers, and free is free. But OCA participants aren't beggars. They contribute to the digitization and access tools, so they can be more generous. They might even accommodate the brilliant, interactive products I envisioned in my April 2005 column, "Bookblogs or Blogbooks? Are New Content Formats on the Way?" Someday, they might even accommodate some paid content. After all, Yahoo! Search does offer its Subscriptions program.

In any case, these are exciting times, and it's downright lovely to have two approaches and two teams of overachievers working to bring all the knowledge stores they can find online. In fact, the juxtaposition of the two approaches may offer the greatest promise. As Tennessee Ernie Ford, the cornpone comic and popular basso of the 1950s, used to sing in his hit song "Sixteen Tons," "One fist of iron, the other of steel/If the right one don't a-get you, then the left one will."

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By Barbara Quint

Barbara Quint is editor of Searcher magazine. Her e-mail address is bquint@mindspring.com. Send your comments about this column to itletters@infotoday.com.