Open Content Alliance = Books + Universal Web Search / Slashdot

The Internet Archive, whose main claim to fame is the Wayback Machine, designed to archive the internet's web history, has created a new project: the Open Content Alliance. Its purpose is to open the nation's library collections to universal web search.

A number of major library systems, including the Boston Public Library and Smithsonian, have refused to sign up with competing ventures by Microsoft and Google because they do not provide for universal access to digitized books. These commercial ventures prohibit books being accessed by competing search engines. So far, 80 libraries and research institutions have signed on with Open Content Alliance.

They must pay for the scanning of their books while Google and Microsoft offset that cost for their participating institutions

Source: Internet Archive Challenges Google / 2007-10-22 / Slashdot

Related News

• Libraries Decline Offers to Place Books on Google and Microsoft Search / 2007-10-23 / Search Engine Roundtable: A New York Times article discusses the Open Content Alliance, an initiative to put books online for everyone's consumption regardless of affiliation. ...
• Freeing books and other digital things / 2007-10-22 / ZDNet Blogs

Full detail of OCA on OpenLibrary.org

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Life Celebrates Diversity, Google Agrees / 2007 / SML

Life Celebrates Diversity, Google Agrees / 2007 / SML, originally uploaded by See-ming Lee 李思明 SML.

Google Celebrates Diversity
As the billions of pages in our index show, Google is a great believer in inclusiveness.

Google aspires to be an organization that reflects the globally diverse audience that our search engine and tools serve. We believe that in addition to hiring the best talent, the diversity of perspectives, ideas, and cultures leads to the creation of better products and services. This diversity of our employees and partners serves as the foundation for us to better serve our diverse customers and stakeholders all over the world.

"Diversity plays a large role in the way we're developing our engineering organization around the world. We're building a large worldwide office presence to establish ample global representation among our engineers, and we're applying that same focus to establish a balanced representation of employees at Google. In the end, these efforts help us more accurately and relevantly represent our users, and our continued success depends on the best minds working from different perspectives and insights."
Alan Eustace - Google SVP, Engineering & Research

Google considers diversity a business imperative. We foster diversity through awarding scholarships, outreach in K-12 initiatives, partnerships, and striving to perfect a work environment that is inclusive, supportive, and collaborative.

©2007 Google - Home - About Google

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Copyright 2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Flickr / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

SML Copyright Notice

Copyright 2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.