Global Cooperation for Global Access:

The Million Book Project

Denise Troll CoveyPrincipal Librarian for Special Projects

Carnegie Mellon

CRIS 2004 – Antwerp, Belgium

The Million Book Project

• Digitize & provide open access to a million books

• Vision, leadership, & research – Carnegie Mellon

• $$ Equipment & travel – NSF

• $$ Labor & research – India & China

“Attempt to understand & solve

the technical, economic, & social policy

issues of providing online access

to all creative works of the human race.”Raj Reddy

National Surveys of Students & Faculty

• 90% want convenient, speedy, easy access– The only thing they want more is quality information

• 61% want remote access to full-text e-resources

• Fewer than half think the library meets these needs

• 48% start with Google or other Internet search engine

Gloriana St. Clair

National Surveys of Undergraduates

• 96% believe surface web information is adequate

• 72% use an Internet search engine

• 48% believe library web site information is inferior

• 46% use online resources all or most of the time

• Efficiency is more important than relevance

Michael Shamos

Carnegie Mellon Graduate Students

• 82% start with an Internet search engine

• Getting information from the web is at least twice as easy as getting it from library e-resources

• Using library e-resources is about as convenient as getting information from professors or classmates

• 24% often can’t get information when they need it – Out of print books & old journals

Social Significance

• Help meet the need for convenient, speedy, easy,

remote access to quality academic resources

• Address disparity in library size & accessibility

• Democratize & facilitate new knowledge

• Support digital library research

• Preserve heritage

Collection of Collections

• What librarians select & partners want

– Books for College Libraries (BCL)

– Technical reports

– Cultural artifacts

– Government documents

• What we can acquire

– Bulk, cheap, fast

Nov 2001 – NSF Planning meeting

Michael Lesk

Seeking Copyright Permission for Open Access

• Increased success: improved request letter, prompt follow up, nature of collection, & ability to preview

• University presses, scholarly associations, & estates are more likely than commercial presses to grant permission

• Transaction cost of $78 per volume is too expensive

Response rate per contacts

Success rate per responses

Success rate per contacts

Random books 58% 43% 25%Posner fine books * 76% 70% 53%

Shift from Per Title to Per Publisher

Indigenous Materials

Public Domain

In Copyright

Initial Current

Requires 18% success rate with BCL publishers

& 500 books each

Copyright Permission Request Letter

• Educate

– Users want to find information online, but use print

– Online access increases use, even use of older works

– Open access does not decrease & can increase sales

– Currently no revenue

from out-of-print books

Request & Incentive

• Ask for non-exclusive permission to digitize – All out of print, in copyright titles– All titles published prior to a date of their choosing– All titles published # or more years ago– List of titles they provide

• Assure

– Following preservation standards & copyright law– Print & save only one page at a time

• Give – images, metadata, & OCR $$$$

Early – Preliminary – Statistics

Million Book Copyright Owners

Total 206

1. Owners contacted 100%

2. Owners responded 24%

3. Success - Responses 57%

Success - Contacts 14%

Posner Copyright Owners

107

65%

76%

70%

53%Nov 2003 – Mar 2004

Many more follow up negotiations to be done

Don’t yet know number of titles

Success Rate Comparison

0%

25%

50%

75%

100%

Randombooks

P os nerbooks

M illionbooks

Based on responses

Scholarly associations

University presses

Commercial publishers

Authors/Estates

Other

Digital Registry

• Registry of reproductions of books & journals digitized or queued for digitization– Reduce duplication– More access for less cost

• Registry signals– Intent to preserve & make accessible in entirety– Compliance with standards & best practices– Professionally managed storage & maintenance– Use copy available for public access

Release May 31, 2004

Acquisitions & Shipping

• Acquisitions – Copyrighted books – OCLC locating in partner libraries – Out of copyright – weeding; depositories; duplicates

• Lessons learned from pilot shipment to India– Reduce cost to $1 per book round trip by changing packing

– Reduce time by distributed shipping & knowing customs

• Lessons learned working with China– Customs & content issues initially prohibited shipping – Scanning centers declared free enterprise zones 2004

Metadata & Digitization

• Following standards

• Operators scan & post-process– Above average wages

– 4000 books per year per scanner (two shifts per day)

– 400,000 books per year with 100 scanners

• Librarians capture metadata– Bibliographic: MARC or DC

– Administrative: copyright permission & source library

Sustainability

• Following standards will enable migration

• Organizations committed to host the Collection– Carnegie Mellon

– Internet Archive

– Perhaps OCLC

• Goal is to have ten mirror sites – Estimated cost is one million dollars

– Estimated size is 20 terabytes

– University of California at Merced

– DL of India

– China

Brewster Kahle

Issues & Next Steps

• Adding value

– Negotiating with Amazon.com for print on demand

• Updating workflow & processing the backlog

• Coordinating acquisition & shipping

• Integrating the collection

• Improving the interface

• Copyright permission work

Thank you!

Denise Troll Covey – troll@andrew.cmu.edu