While it is overwhelmingly accepted as a good thing that book content become searchable and available on the Internet, critics question some of Google's actions and motives. The most vociferous opposition is coming from authors and publishers who reject Google's practice of scanning their in-copyright books without their permission. Another criticism is that Google will require users to use its own proprietary search engine to access the books, even though they were scanned from university and public libraries. These concerns have paved the way for other Internet companies to launch book digitization projects of their own in hopes that they can emerge as a frontrunner in the burgeoning market for online books.

The UC libraries, which have long valued open, accessible content and have put numerous scholarly publications, museum artifacts, and other content online for public access, have joined a digitization project that fits their ethos: the Open Content Alliance (OCA). The OCA initiative includes Yahoo!, Microsoft, the Internet Archive, and a growing list of other universities and organizations. While initially the OCA will only scan public domain books from UC and other collections, it plans to work with publishers and authors to include books that are still in copyright. The OCA will also make its index available to other search engines (in addition to Yahoo!) so that the books can be accessed from a variety of Internet sources.

A compelling reason for UC to get involved, says Dan Greenstein, Associate Vice Provost and University Librarian of the California Digital Library, is the potential of the OCA to create collections that simply are not possible in the print world.

"We want to make the point that the world's knowledge is deeply distributed -- no one has a complete collection of anything," says Greenstein. "And in the US, there is no national library that keeps a copy of everything, as they do in Europe. The Internet allows that collection to be real."

Also, Greenstein says the ability to digitize the content and make it available to the public plays into UC's public service mission. "Putting our content out there will get other universities to do the same, which will improve access for everyone," says Greenstein.

It could also save money down the road. UC spends millions of dollars to license digital collections of books, which can only be accessed by the UC community. Often, the libraries already own those books in print, which means the university is essentially paying for them twice. Greenstein would prefer to digitize public domain books in the UC library collections and make them available to all instead of continuing to purchase or license collections from vendors.

Also, making books accessible online in an open fashion could help the libraries avoid costs incurred in storing and managing selected printed materials that are held redundantly across the system. The potential for savings are especially great with very large and highly redundant collections such as government documents or older back runs of scholarly journals.

While the OCA will focus initially on out-of-copyright materials, it is in discussion with a number of publishers with a view to exploring how and under what conditions it might make selected in-copyright materials available. While the digital distribution of in-copyright material might alarm some publishers, Greenstein believes that some unrestricted access to books online can actually increase print sales; he cites the fact that putting UC Press monographs online has had this effect, particularly with older backlist materials [ see related article ]. However, unlike Google, Greenstein and the OCA believe that authors and publishers should be key players in determining how and under what terms and conditions in-copyright materials are offered online.

Says Greenstein: "The key is to develop mechanisms to enable copyright holders to exploit Internet technologies for commercial gains in a way that does not undermine open access."