Thursday, June 16, 2005

a webcast on Google Library at U Michigan and Oxford #

Yesterday morning (June 15, 2005), I participated in the webcast about Google's big book digitization effort: EDUCAUSE | EDUCAUSE Live! June 15, 2005: Google’s Library Digitization Project: Reports from Michigan and Oxford. I found the experience more worthwhile than I expected. While the quality and quantity of information that comes out are at the level I expected (the speakers are well-spoken, well-informed, but discreet insiders), I was extremely pleased with the ability that I had to pose questions. The two queries that I presented were placed before the speakers, and although I wished I had more leeway with follow-up questions, I was happy to get the questions posed at all. (The powerpoint slides and audio have been archived. It would have been a nice touch if the chat session was likewise archived -- though I'm not sure the chatters necessarily would want that.) I took down a few points from the first talk by John P. Wilkin (Associate University Librarian, U of Michigan). the digitization effort had to non-destructive images need to be good enough for U Of Michigan's preservation efforts rights and restrictions had to fit the needs/desires for both UM and Google immediate plans to make a "dark archive" of the entire collection UM can't give away copies to rival commercial outfits UM can't just give away the files to others; UM might provide services around the materials that they can make available. What are those services?; open access to materials; cooperative efforts can be done; how to get involved? standards involved? for print: 600 dpi TIFF, bi-tonal files; 300 DPI JPG2000 for a lot of illustrative materials; OCRed output images aren't perfect but "are good enough" Wilkins can't reveal details about Google's technology. rare and archival materials excluded from current deal I wanted to know: Will enough access be given to the entire higher education community so that we won't need to do another big digitzation effort? Answer: there is a sizeable body of materials not represented by the Google effort. estimate of 30% of materials held by only one or two research libraries. If I had a chance to follow up, I would have pressed for more information about the nature of the cooperative efforts that can be launched around the materials. Will community interests be represented sufficiently? Or will the interests of UM always trump the communal interests, so much so that we in the rest of the community would want to start another effort? I also asked: "What's the speaker's perspective on the Internet Archive's similar project to scan books with other universities?" Wilkin answered that as much as he would like the Google effort to be sufficient, a bit of heterogeneity (provided by IA) would be good.   Posted by Raymond Yee on 6/16/05; 9:56:41 AM from the Educational Technology dept. Discuss