Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
topic market - is rapidly signing deals with publishers to make e-books
available and providing access to readers via its Kindle e-book reader. If
we also consider the huge amounts of older and rarer research materials
being made available online by local and national digitization
initiatives, the vast scale of the rich information resource available to
scholars and researchers becomes apparent.
Our digital heritage
In Chapter 5 Alastair Dunning examines the many issues and
technological challenges surrounding the digitization of library heritage
collections. There is little doubt that a major future role for academic
(and other) libraries will be to disseminate the world's heritage
literature and artefacts to a wider audience than just scholars and
researchers. However, we must recognize that we do have powerful
competition in the form of Google. Google's mission is 'to organise the
world's information and make it universally accessible and useful', and
it has many millions of dollars to devote to the cause. The Google
digitization programme is already well under way, digitizing out-of-
copyright topics in scores of major research libraries around the world.
Dr Rolf Griebel of the Bavarian State Library, a partner in the
programme, commented on his library's participation:
With today's announcement we are opening our library to the world
and bringing the true purpose of libraries - the discovery of topics and
knowledge - a decisive step further into the digital era. This is an
exciting effort to help readers around the world discover and access
Germany's rich literary tradition online - whenever and wherever they
want.
(Google, 2009)
But Google is not the only show in town. Libraries are also involved in
significant digitization programmes and it is heartening to see the
extent of national commitment to the provision of digital information.
In the USA, the Library of Congress is leading a nationwide digitization
effort to scan ageing brittle topics - some of which are often too fragile
to be handled by researchers - and make them freely available. The
programme is sponsored by a $2 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation and it involves over 100 libraries, universities and cultural
