I progetti internazionali di digitalizzazione bibliotecaria: un panorama in evoluzione

Author(s)
Roncaglia, Gino
Date Issued
January 25, 2006
Type
Preprint
Abstract
The paper provides a survey of the history and of the features of book digitization projects. According to the author, library digitization is of special relevance for search engines, since it allows them to extend their scope to highly valuable, validated and potentially marketable contents. Furthermore, despite its specific features, the complexity of large-scale full-text book indexing within library digitization projects is comparable to that of web indexing, making it an ideal field for the expansion of search engines (and for the next search engines war). This situation offers to libraries and researches a good opportunity for bridging the gap between the book culture and the digital culture, between printed contents and digital contents. However, special care is needed in order to avoid a risk: the commercial relevance and scope of many book digitization projects might hinder the scientific validity of the results of this huge (and expensive!) effort. Poor digitization quality, lack of proper metadata, proprietary format choices, limited interoperability, too strict copyright constraints, are all factors that may severely hinder the usefulness of the work done. The paper discusses in some detail the digitization projects connected to Amazon Book Search, to Google Book Search (formerly Google Print), to the Open Content Alliance, and to the European digital library. Special attention is devoted to the copyright debate raised by the Google Book Search opt-out approach to the digitization of copyrighted content.
Citation
Gino Roncaglia, I progetti internazionali di digitalizzazione bibliotecaria: un panorama in evoluzione, in 'Digitalia' n. 1, 2006, pp. 11-30
Subjects

digital libraries

library digitization

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