<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Message</TITLE> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2722" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY> <DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><FONT color=#000000 size=3>In Challenge to Google, Yahoo Will Scan Books<BR>New York Times (10/03/05) P. C1; Hafner, Katie </FONT> <P>The goal of the Yahoo-led Open Content Alliance (OCA) is to digitize hundreds of thousands of books and technical papers and put them online for anyone to access. The project stands to rival Google's effort to create a searchable archive of library collections, but without running the risk of copyright violation, because the OCA will initially concentrate on digitizing works in the public domain. Furthermore, the alliance is seeking permission from copyright holders and is making works available via a Creative Commons license, where the copyright holder sets usage conditions. In another break from the Google project, OCA's digitized works will be accessible to any search engine. Among the organizations and institutions participating in the OCA is the Internet Archive, which will perform the actual digitization and archival of books. The University of California, meanwhile, will contribute up to $500,000 to the project in its first year and scan 5,000 volumes of early American fiction initially; an additional 5,000 to 15,000 volumes will be scanned within the next year. "Our approach is very collection-focused, to seed meaningful collections and get other libraries around the world to do the same," says UC California Digital Library librarian Dr. Daniel Greenstein.<BR></P></FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV></BODY></HTML>