When Google announced its plan to digitize millions of books in 2005, along with a deal to scan books from
Today the news broke that several major research libraries—including the Boston Library Consortium—decided to list their library content with OCA rather than with Google or Microsoft. The logic behind this decision: the contracts offered to the libraries by Google and Microsoft restricted indexing and display of their digitized library content to the Google or Microsoft search engines. Unlike Google, OCA wants to make all digital content widely available, including having that digital content indexed on any search engine.
Although Google has had several high-profile libraries join their digitization ranks, libraries that want to make their content more widely available are signing on with OCA. Examples of some of the libraries preferring to sign on with OCA are the Biodiversity Heritage Libraries, San Francisco Public Library, several from the University of California, The British Library, Bancroft Library, and a host of others.
Additionally, there is another distinct difference between the OCA’s approach and that of Google: the OCA seeks permission from publishers to archive copyrighted content as opposed to the “archive first, remove by request later” policy of many digital media companies. Concerning their policy as it regards copyrighted materials, the OCA has stated that “The OCA is committed to respecting the copyrights of content owners. All content providers who contribute to the OCA must agree with the founding principles of the OCA, contained in the OCA Call for Participation, which describes how their materials and associated metadata will be accessed and used. Further, all contributors of collections can specify use restrictions on material that they contribute.”
Google’s mission may be to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful, however the exclusivity clause for archiving library content could be a significant deterrent for many libraries moving into digitization of library content. The plan of the OCA to make digitized library content broadly available across search engines could prove to be significant competition to Google.
The policy differences regarding search engine indexing of digitized library content is an example of “good” competition in business—where a new business is born to provide a service that is not currently offered by others. OCA’s expressed respect for copyright holders as well as its intention to make digitized content widely available might well give OCA and its Internet Archive a business edge over Google.
The competition is on!
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