The choice is not paper or Google, Ludditism or selling your stuff to The Man. You have other options for entering the online age.
One such option is the Open Content Alliance. This is a project of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organized as a library under California law.
OCA emphasizes free membership, sweat equity participation, and librarian-driven decisions. OCA has eight regional scanning centers, all located inside libraries. OCA is scanning 12,000 books per month at ten cents per page.
A few months back I privately despaired that OCA was being overshadowed by the glitz and glam of the Google Book Project. But Brewster Kahle is on the move, and whenever he speaks, he’s taken seriously. I recently sat through a meeting of the Association of Southern Research Libraries (ASERL) whose leaders seriously discussed a digitization project, and I know that was just one of many. Among other issues, now that the irrational exuberance has begun to deflate, and people are asking just how one company can digitize the world in a decade, valid questions about the quality of Google’s scanning are finally being heard.
Library Journal has a great interview where Brewster says some of the things many of us have been thinking (with some of the best minds prudently selecting discretion as the better path to valor). So among OCA’s many benefits, count the joy of speaking truth to power.
If you’re interested in OCA, you can contact tehm at oca@openarchive.org or visit the OCA in San Francisco’s lovely Presidio.