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Open Content Alliance Initiative: Building a Digital Archive Global Content for Universal Access

Warren HolderUniversity of Toronto

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University of Toronto Background

• Largest university in Canada– 67,692 students (59,389 full-time)– 11,365 faculty and staff

• Operating budget– $1.107 billion

• Research grant and contract support– $517 million

• Academic programs– 75 PhD programs– 14 professional faculties

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University of Toronto Background

• 3 Campuses– St. George campus:

49,960 students– U of T at Mississauga:

8,925 students– U of T at Scarborough:

8,807 students

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U of T Library Background

• Largest Library in Canada• Central Libraries + 35 college,

faculty & department libraries• Total collection:

Print1 Electronic(2003/04 data) (Current data)

Books 16,907,750 298,0002

Serials3 34,057 33,3724

1 Includes microforms and other materials2 Estimated3 Titles4 Includes public (unlicensed) titles

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E-Books at the U of T Libraries

• Rapidly growing part of our collection

• Are in high demand by several academic units

• Help overcome challenges of being a 3-campus university

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E-Book Holdings

• Electronic Information Resources database lists ≈ 69,000 titles– ≈ 250 publishers– ≈ 65 service providers (top 12 shown)

Chadwyck-Healey 15,469MyiLibrary 15,006NetLibrary 9,139University of Michigan 8,102Books24x7 4,222SPIE Digital Library 4,119Thesaurus Linguae Graecae 2,844ProQuest 2,701National Academies Press 2,320American Council of Learned Societies 968Cornell University Library 925University of Toronto Libraries 600CogNet (MIT Press) 471Total 66,886

– Will increase by ≈ 200,000 titles as records for major e-book collections are added to EIR and Sirsi databases

60%

90%

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E-Book Collections

• Commercial• Public• Local

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Commercial collections

• Represents over 95% of holdings

• When possible being made available on the Coutts MyiLibrary platform

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Public collections

• Internet Archive• Open Content Alliance

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Internet Archive

• Internet Archive established in 1996• Archive consists of

– Software 34,000+ files– Audio 112,000+ files– Moving Images 33,000+ files– Texts 27,000+ titles

Details at http://www.archive.org

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Open Content Alliance

• Launched in 2005 as a partnership of 61 members

• Goal:to build a permanent archive of digitized texts and multimedia content in all languages

• Being built as an open repository– Open to the world,

for the use by individuals and organizations

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Local collections

• Initial focus– Single items– Small collections– Demonstration projects

• Current focus– Large scale digitization

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U of T Library - Pilot Year

• Robotic scanning (Kirtas)

• What we learned– Scanner limitations– Image quality– Costs– Collections– Willingness to participate

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U of T Library - Current Activities

• Large scale project• New scanners

– Internet Archive Scribe scanner

• In-depth subject collections

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Where will we put the local collections?

• Will be housed on Servers at the University of Toronto Library

• Now considering interface options• Factors are:

– Familiarity of interface– File size– New developments

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How Will Users Find E-Books?

• We already have MARC records

• Records for each e-book are put into our electronic resources database

• Existing catalogue records will be augmented with links to e-books

• So, users will find e-books in Library catalogue and with other e-resources

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Where are we headed?

• Many questions to be answered• Changing user expectations and

demands• Changing opportunities with

publishers

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Questions