Three hundred years before the birth of Christ, the largest library in the world was the Royal Library of Alexandria, Egypt. Legend has it that all of the world's knowledge--perhaps as many as 700,000 parchment scrolls--was stored within the Library's walls.
According to one story quoted in Wikipedia, "By decree of Ptolemy III of Egypt, all visitors to the city were required to surrender all books and scrolls in their possession; these writings were then swiftly copied by official scribes. The originals were put into the Library, and the copies were delivered to the previous owners."
Talk about copyright infringement.
Today, over fifteen hundred years after the Library's destruction, Google's stated mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." A modern version of the Library at Alexandria?
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and inventor of the first electronic publishing system, talked about the creation of a digital library in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle. He was quoted saying, "If we do this right, it will be remembered as one of the great things humans have done, up there with the Library of Alexandria, Gutenberg's press and putting a man on the moon."
Kahle is the driving force behind the OCA (Open Content Alliance) which I wrote about for the first time on November 6 in a blog entitled "Another Team Is Suiting Up." Seven weeks ago, the OCA announced its intention to begin digitizing books in the public domain. In doing so, it differentiates itself from Google, which intends to digitize all books in the collections of its five partner libraries--including those still under copyright.
Among the OCA's founding members are: The Internet Archive, Yahoo!, Adobe Systems, the European Archive, HP Labs, the British National Archives, O'Reilly Media and the Prelinger Archives. During their kick-off event in San Francisco on October 27, additional members were announced, including Microsoft. The Smithsonian and Johns Hopkins University have also agreed to participate.
Kahle described his long-time dream of providing "'a permanent archive of digital work . . . available for free to scholars and researchers.'" To this end, he started the nonprofit Internet Archive in 1996. "'My interest is to build the great library. That was the goal I set for myself 25 years ago. It is now technically possible to live up to the dream of the Library of Alexandria.'"
According to Kahle, he met with Yahoo early this year to discuss potential joint ventures between the nonprofit and commercial sectors. "Yahoo proposed creating a freely accessible digital library that would include only books in the public domain . . . It was agreed that Yahoo would supply the search engine for the Web site and index the books scanned by the Internet Archive's Scribe machines."
Kahle is anxious for Google to join the OCA team. While it's a nice dream, I have difficulty seeing Google joining an effort where Yahoo is providing the search engine and in which Microsoft is a participant. But, hey, we're entering the season of miracles. Maybe the wolf will live with the lamb and the leopard [will] lie down with the kid.