Johns Hopkins has begun taking participatory steps in a project to digitize library resources called the Open Library, which was developed by the Open Content Alliance. The consortium is seeking to construct an online archive of texts and multimedia that will be available as free content. The University's new association with the Open Content Alliance is expected to bring many volumes from the Hopkins libraries into the public domain.
The Open Content Alliance (OCA) was conceived in 2005 by Yahoo.com in response to Google.com's Book Search project. The Book Search is essentially a closed search engine, with a variety of access limitations and security measures that decide who is permitted to view the content provided in database's titles. Book Search is allied with a number of high profile universities, including Stanford, Harvard and Oxford universities, and intends to make more than 15 million titles available within a decade. There has been, however, considerable controversy associated with Book Search stemming primarily from the publishing industry which claims copyright infringement results from digitizing work without regard to copyrights. Essentially Google will digitize any work, copyrighted or not, as long as it was not explicitly told otherwise by Nov. 1, 2005.
By contrast, the OCA is structured to keep public domain works in the public domain online. Any titles included in the Open Library will appear in the search results of search engines allied with the OCA. Many other groups besides the Johns Hopkins Libraries have joined, including Columbia University, the University of Toronto and the United Kingdom's National Archives. The most glaring difference between the Open Library and Book Search is that the OCA seeks to obtain copyright holders' permission before digitizing a work that is under copyright protection.
"Johns Hopkins University Libraries are pleased to support the principles of the Open Content Alliance and look forward to participating in the Alliance to the degree our resources permit," Winston Tabb, the dean of university libraries, said.
Hopkins also intends to offer both technical support and manpower to the Open Library.
"We have developed open-source software through two National Science Foundation grants that we have offered to support the OCA. The first software offers a framework for optical character recognition of various fonts, languages [and tables] that one might encounter in a large collection of digitized text. The second software focuses on recognizing [proper and geographic] names and linking them to associated glossaries, dictionaries [and thesauri]," Sayeed Choudhury, associate director for library digital programs, said.
These technologies come in the response of the OCA's goal to increase the use and power of the Open Library by augmenting the amount of text that can be searched and relevant information be linked.
"Hopkins is working with the Open Content Alliance to organize a workshop in October that will bring together various members of the academic and corporate community. The Johns Hopkins Scholarly Communications Group, for example, has already stated its stand on copyright issues, saying, `intellectual property rights must stay with authors and universities and authors must negotiate to retain certain rights [such as the right to post their work on their own Web site, distribute copies to their classes or include in a course pack]'," Choudhury added.
University administrators say that many of the advantages of undertaking this project are intended for the general public. The Open Library will offer, according to its Web site, "broad, public access to a rich panorama of world culture" by building an archive of multilingual digitized materials for the public.
Administrators project that the university community, however, will be the primary benefactors.
"By working with OCA, we are identifying ways in which the digital collections and services will support the specific research and learning needs of our faculty and students," Mr. Choudhury said.
While largely unaware of the University's participation in the project, students have generally expressed support for its goals upon learning of them. Accessibility to material outside of the library is the primary benefit, many say, of the initiative.
"It's nice for me because I can access material from home. It's so convenient," sophomore Sarah Abare said. "It's about opening up a bunch of resources for people and making it a lot easier for people to get information."
