Yahoo, Others Launch Virtual-Library Alternative To Google Project

Yahoo Inc., the University of California and more than a half dozen other organizations launched on Monday a consortium dedicated to digitizing books and other materials from libraries, archives and publishers, an effort that would compete with a similar, but controversial, initiative by Google Inc.

The Open Content Alliance differs from Google Print in that only works in the public domain, or contributed by copyright holders, would be stored in a network of databases maintained by the Internet Archive, a non-profit group in San Francisco. Yahoo will run the search engine on the OCA Web site.

Besides skirting the copyright issues that have led to one lawsuit against Google by the Authors Guild, the OCA plans to make its index searchable by any organization interested in tapping its resources. Google controls access to its library index, in order to prevent others from getting access to anything but snippets from copyrighted material, unless authorized by the copyright holder.

Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian for the Internet Archive, said the OCA hopes to build a "virtual library that would be brought to you by different search systems."

"If we pull this off, then we'll have done something very worthwhile," Kahle said.

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