If knowledge really is power, the Boston University library system has wisely decided to team up with the Boston Library Consortium and the Open Content Alliance to spread knowledge through Internet-accessible scans of its materials — and maintain some power over the mission and methods of the cooperative project between libraries and archivists.
Google’s digital book-scanning project, which operates at no cost to participating libraries, may seem like a smart financial move for private university libraries and public and national libraries that have signed on to the project, but the importance of maintaining independence and intellectual integrity is important enough for BU and more than 80 other libraries and knowledge repositories to resist the allure of for-profit services from Google and Microsoft.
While Google appears to have limitless power in the corporate Internet world, its omnipotence may not have the same place in academia. Concentrating and restricting access to materials — Google requires that books scanned into its digital archive only be reached though its own search engine — is a good strategic business move fit for the competitive world, but it is not in keeping with the open philosophies of many learning institutions. The goals of Google and the BLC are inherently different. While Google seeks only one avenue (one it controls and profits from) to digitized content that is in the public domain, the BLC, partnering with the OCA, seeks complete accessibility through any avenue to academic content.
Google’s commercial motives could also impede its ability to make materials that are valuable for scholarship, but less so for business, accessible on the Internet. The OCA received a $2 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, part of which will digitize the John Adams collection at the Boston Public Library. The collection, which includes the former president’s extensive book collection, is of exceptional value to scholars but may be less important to Google, which presents links to retail websites like Amazon.com and Barnes ‘ Noble alongside scanned materials. In the future, Google could be discouraged from posting materials that cannot be sold online and therefore could not attract advertisers.
By working with the OCA, BU’s libraries and the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center should push to make materials that cannot be found in bookstores or even in digitized form available to the public. Collections of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., poet Robert Frost and writer Joseph Conrad could be made available to scholars around the world, with the convenience of a click. Without the corporate goals of Google, BU should pursue whatever paths it can to share one-of-a-kind documents. BU, and other institutions whose libraries have forgone the financial ease of partnering with Google, must make the most of their independence and move to put even possibly unprofitable materials online.