Online library reaches million book milestone
,----[ Quote
| The Universal Library Project is the brainchild of researchers at Carnegie
| Mellon University, and has received $3.5 million in seed funding from the
| National Science Foundation. The project has also received in-kind
| contributions from the Zhejiang University in China and the Indian Institute
| of Science in India that have been valued at $10 million each, and has more
| recently forged a partnership with the Library at Alexandria in Egypt.
`----
http://www.linux.com/feature/123255
Watch the references at the bottom. Microsoft is using the British taxpayers
and government as agents of monopolisation by making old books (national
assets) Microsoft Windows-only. Revolting.
Related:
China's Ancient Treasures Go Digital
,----[ Quote ]
| Hundreds of workers at museums, academic institutions and government
| offices in Taiwan are contributing to the National Digital Archives
| project. The research institute Academia Sinica, for example, is
| leading the software and database development effort, mainly
| using Linux and MySQL.
`----
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132439-c,sites/article.html
Microlibraries Project: 20,000+ books available on demand
,----[ Quote ]
| The Center for Open and Sustainable Learning (COSL) has organized
| the Microlibraries Project, making over 20,000 Project Gutenberg
| books available at minimal cost through a simple print-on-demand
| system.
|
| [...]
|
| The entire library can be accessed here. The software used to
| convert these books is open source, and will be available soon.
`----
http://www.computers.net/2007/02/microlibraries_.html
Publish And Perish
,----[ Quote ]
| Alexander Rose, the executive director of the futurist Long Now
| Foundation, worries about the impermanence of digital information.
| "If you save that computer for 100 years, will the electrical plugs
| look the same?" he asks. "The Mac or the PC--will they be around?
| If they are, what about the software? " So far there's no business
| case for digital preservation--in fact, for software makers like
| Microsoft, planned obsolescence is the plan.
|
| "The reality is that it's in companies' interest that software should
| become obsolete and that you should have to buy every upgrade,"
| Rose says. We could be on the cusp of a turning point, though, in the
| way businesses and their customers think about digital preservation.
| "Things will start to change when people start losing all of their personal
| photos," Rose said.
`----
http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/30/books-information-preservation-tech-media_cx_ee_books06_1201acid.html?partner=yahootix
http://tinyurl.com/yyjqoh
Message-ID: <52e0v4-ur2.ln1@xxxxxxxxxx>
From: "[H]omer" <spam@xxxxxxx>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: [News] [Rights] Open Content Alliance digitises libraries using
Free Formats
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 06:39:46 +0100
,----[ Quote ]
| Internet Archive Challenges Google
|
| .----
| | richards1052 writes "The Internet Archive, whose main claim to
| | fame is the Wayback Machine, designed to archive the internet's web
| | history, has created a new project: the Open Content Alliance. It's
| | purpose is to open the nation's library collections to universal
| | web search. A number of major library systems, including the Boston
| | Public Library and Smithsonian, have refused to sign up with
| | competing ventures by Microsoft and Google because they do not
| | provide for universal access to digitized books. These commercial
| | ventures prohibit books being accessed by competing search engines.
| | So far, 80 libraries and research institutions have signed on with
| | Open Content Alliance. They must pay for the scanning of their
| | books while Google and Microsoft offset that cost for their
| | participating institutions."
| `----
|
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/22/139202
|
|
| Related:
|
| Microsoft "saves" British National Library and National Archive from
| "Digital Dark-age" which /it/ created, using false "open" standards:
|
| Defending against the digital dark age
|
| .----
| | Rather than making Microsoft appear heroic about a problem that it
| | had contributed to, the release highlighted a bigger issue that
| | goes to the heart of digital preservation. As well as using the
| | Virtual PC 2007 software to emulate older versions of Microsoft
| | software, the NA also commented on its ongoing work to convert
| | documents into open file formats. Mentioned as it was in a
| | Microsoft press release, some concluded that this meant the NA
| | planned to adopt Microsoft's Open XML document format, which has
| | been criticised by open-source advocates for not being very open at
| | all.
| |
| | "If it were, Microsoft wouldn't need to make Novell and Xandros and
| | Linspire sign NDAs and then write translators for them," wrote
| | Pamela Jones, open-source expert and editor of the Groklaw blog.
| `----
|
| http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/features/0,1000002000,39288099,00.htm
|
|
| 100,000 books freed by the IA
|
| .----
| | Milestone Achieved
| |
| | The Internet Archive announced on December 20, 2006 that it had
| | achived a milestone in having digitized and made available to date,
| | a total of 100,000 books on its servers. The bulk of these books
| | are from members of the Open Content Alliance. All are available
| | without restriction to public access and enjoyment. A copy of the
| | press release can be seen at the right. Within hours of the
| | release, over 60 news organizations had picked up the AP newswire
| | story. Congratulations to all!
| `----
|
| http://www.opencontentalliance.org/
|
|
| Those 100,000 texts can be found here:
|
| http://www.archive.org/details/texts
|
| Uses TXT, HTML, and an online interactive format called Flipbook, which
| is an Ajax standards-based viewer that works in any standards compliant
| browser, without the need for a plugin:
|
| .----
| | Internet Archive’s Flipbook viewer
| |
| | Roy Tennant on Web4Lib pointed out a blog posting by one of the
| | developers of Flipbook, the Internet Archive’s new Ajax-based page
| | turner for its OpenLibrary. This type of page turner is not unique
| | — the British Library has had one for some time — but it’s great to
| | see new implementations of it.
| `----
|
| http://digitizationblog.interoperating.info/?p=236
|
|
| Unfortunately, the British Library's implementation is /not/ quite so
| standards compliant:
|
| .----
| | Turning the Pages™ uses the Shockwave plug-in, which can be
| | downloaded from the Adobe website, to simulate the action of
| | turning the pages of a real book. For Mac OS X users there is an
| | alternative download. The volumes may not open if you block popups
| | on your computer.
| |
| | NEW! A new version, called Turning the Pages 2.0™, has been
| | developed for the Microsoft Vista operating system and was launched
| | on 30 January. It will also run on Windows XP with the .NET 3
| | framework. Find out if you have the necessary software and hardware
| | now.
| `----
|
| http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html
|
|
| There's an "accessibility" area for those who choose not to use
| Microsoft's Slopware, with static content only.
|
|
| The IA's Open Content can also be downloaded in various formats,
| including this rather interesting Book Format, called DjVu:
|
| http://djvu.sourceforge.net/abstract.html
|
| Cross-platform and GPL licensed, unlike Microsoft's "Turning the Pages".
|
|
| And let's not forget the one that started it all - Project Gutenberg,
| which began in 1971 by Michael Hart as a community project to make plain
| text versions of books available freely to all:
|
| http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
|
| Provides texts in Free Formats, unlike Microsoft's "Turning the Pages".
`----
|
|
