Library Shifts

As if on cue, a Chronicle of Higher Education podcast shines light on what we’ll be discussing with the 2007 Internet & Society Conference: open content, digital libraries and the changing nature of University.  In the first of what will be a series of weekly podcasts, The Chronicle spoke with Internet Archive director Brewster Kahle about their Open Content Alliance (OCA), an open repository of digitized books and other materials.

Stressing the importance of the public domain, the OCA is scanning and putting online 12,000 books per month.  Like other books scanning efforts, optical character recognition allows the books to be searchable and downloadable – collectively, the multiple books scanning efforts are creating online libraries that provide access to comprehensive bodies of work and collections in a way that reframes the role and function of libraries. 

With the podcast touching on the DMCA, A2K, new technologies and international perspective, the Chronicle’s podcasts are off to an expansive and provocative start.

Further, the Chronicle directs us to the Learning 2.0 Program, a 23 section training ground on new technologies designed to encourage librarians (and others!) to learn about web tools. The program’s designers over at The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in North Carolina, are keeping ahead of what promises to be a revolutionizing curve.  

Image courtesy of Peterme with CC licensing.