Race to Digitize Books Heats Up

Though facing legal action from book publishers and authors for alleged copyright infringement, Google's quest to build a digital library has lead to the rise of an alternative project for offering online access to the world's books. A group called the Open Content Alliance favors what it terms “a less restrictive approach” to prevent content from being controlled by a commercial entity and seeks to make it freely accessible.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation awarded $1 million to the Internet Archive, a leader in the Open Content Alliance, to pay for content owned by the Boston Public Library, the Getty Research Institute and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Internet Archive has made over 100,00 books available in little over a year since its formation in October 2005. The alliance says it won't scan copyrighted content unless it receives permission from the copyright owner; most of the books already scanned are works whose copyrights have expired. Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon.com are part of the alliance.

The University of Virginia Library signed on to Google's Books Library Project, joining eight other universities, including the University of Wisconsin (whose books are shown.) Google is also conducting a pilot project with the Library of Congress. Microsoft continues to solicit publishers for content, as it launched its beta book search site, http://books.live.com. www.archive.org, www.books.google.com