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book scan wizard + internet archive = DIY public domain digital book repository
At the last couple of depository library council meetings, I've heard comments from documents librarians -- especially from librarians at smaller institutions -- that they'd love to participate in the digitization process of historic government documents, but for various reasons (lack of $$, staffing, time, technical infrastructure etc) could not undertake large scale digitization projects. Now there's a way for lots of libraries to chip in on the greater goal of increased access to historic government documents with very little $$ or infrastructure. We've mentioned before about BookLiberator and DIYbookscanner, two projects working on low cost hardware solutions for digitizing books using off the shelf digital cameras and free opensource software called Book Scan Wizard. But there were still 2 pieces missing to make the whole workflow run smoothly for libraries and government documents collections of all sizes. The third piece to the puzzle just became a reality with yesterday's announcement that Book Scan Wizard had teamed up with the Internet Archive to provide automatic uploads of scans to the Internet Archive (directions and more information here). Hardware: check. Software: check. Digital infrastructure: check.
With the new version of Book Scan Wizard, or even through just uploading directly to the Internet Archive, any PDF composed of images of book pages or organized zip file filled with images of book pages will be automatically processed. The Internet Archive’s servers will then automatically perform optical character recognition (OCR) on the book and make a pdf, epub, kindle (mobi), daisy, djvu, and text file copy of the entire book available for download by anyone, anywhere. You can see a sample book from this process to get a better idea. All this happens within a few hours of the book being uploaded and then anyone can download it. This is free OCR for anyone in the world.Now there's one last piece needed: Scan on demand. This idea has already been put into practice by the Internet Archive's Open Library and their partnership with the Boston Public Library. What we need is to open up the Catalog of Government Publications (CGP) -- which will soon include over 1 million records from GPO's historic shelflist spanning 1870s - 1992 -- similar to the way the BPL's scan on demand project (now retired it seems) allowed users to request a scan of a public domain book directly from the Open Library catalog. GPO could manage this scan on demand process -- or allow libraries to pick and choose documents from the CGP -- connect the bibliographic metadata from the historic shelflist, and upload to both the Internet Archive and FDsys. The circle is complete. Am I missing anything? Would love to hear readers' thoughts.
Holiday gift idea: a piece of the public domain
Carl Malamud's FedFlix project is a joint venture with the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) whereby he takes NTIS videos, digitizes them and uploads them to the Internet Archive. Well now he's expanding FedFlix to include public domain videos from the National Archives. He's released 41 videos into the public domain in this way, but has put together an Amazon Wish List in order to expand public access to public domain video content from the National Archives. If you see anything you'd like to buy the public domain, they'll take your DVD and upload the video to YouTube, the Internet Archive, and to public.resource.org's own rsync/ftp public domain stock footage library. So why not add a gift of the public domain to your favorite person's/people's stockings this year? We'll all be glad we did! UPDATE 12/25/09: The wish list has been fulfilled. You can watch all of the donated NARA videos on YouTube, Internet Archive, or public.resource.org's bulk server. Thanks Carl! [HT BoingBoing!] Continue reading
Tools of Change: BookServer
This is a presentation that is definitely worth seeing!
- Web of Books, Peter Brantley, Presentation at Tools of Change Frankfurt introducing the BookServer architecture. Brief description of history, motivations, and technical outline. "Creating a new architecture using common, open standards that permits people to ?nd, buy, acquire, and read books from any source, on any device, using many different ebook applications."
Internet Archive proposal for mass digitization
I had known that the Internet Archive had submitted a response to the GPO's RFP for mass digitization. A friend just sent me the link to the proposal submitted to GPO (embedded below and here's the link to the proposal and supporting documents). As you can probably guess, we've been pulling for the Archive to get the bid, not least of which because the Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit library and we've stated on more than one occasion that privatization of public domain government information is a very bad idea. But also, we've been heartened by the quality of the Archive's scans to date, their openness and willingness to be collaborative in their processes and data access and sharing. Those qualities certainly come through in their proposal for mass digitization -- not to mention the fact that they've actually made their proposal public! While the award has not been officially announced, we really hope that the Archive wins the award. Perhaps GPO will name them as an official depository library and work with them not only on the "legacy" collection (there needs to be a better description of the deep and rich collections of depository libraries than the somewhat pejorative "legacy" :-| ) but on digital deposit of government documents going forward. --that is all.
Brewster Kahle on Google Book Digitization and the Future of Libraries
Of all the things I have read about the Google book digitization project and its consequences, this is one of the best. Listen to the interview (Lunchtime Listen!) or read the transcript.
- Google Faces Antitrust Investigation for Agreement to Digitize Millions of Books Online, interview with Brewster Kahle, Democracy Now!, April 30, 2009.
BREWSTER KAHLE: Let's take the out of copyright, the stuff that's really--it's public domain, meaning belongs to the public. It's lived long enough to become part of the public sphere. But there are perpetual restrictions that the libraries must perform, that if they get these digital copies back, they must put up restrictions on use, such that they cannot be accessible by the general public. AMY GOODMAN: Who can they be accessed by? BREWSTER KAHLE: People on campus can use them, for the out-of-copyright works, but just on campus. And otherwise, they have to put up restrictions. And what's turning out is a lot of these libraries aren't even bothering to get copies back, because what can they use them for? I mean, in the future, people are going to want to have access to as many books as possible. And what Google is doing is pulling these together for many libraries to build a great collection. Terrific. But the bits and pieces that are going back to these libraries don't make up a great collection. And what they can do with them is very, very limited. So these libraries aren't, in many cases, even bothering to get the digital copies back.Second, when Kahle asked if Google would share copies of digitized books with the Internet Archive, Google refused.
AMY GOODMAN: Conceivably, Google could give you the digitized copies, is that right? BREWSTER KAHLE: Yes, Google could, but they have refused. AMY GOODMAN: Why? BREWSTER KAHLE: They say that they've paid for the work. They want to be the place that people go to get them. So they are going to be the proprietors of the public domain.Although Google claims its mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," it would be more accurate to say its mission is to make money controlling the world's information. Continue reading
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