[Please excuse the cross-postings. --ELM]

The Hesburgh Libraries of the University of Notre Dame is sponsoring a  
mini-symposium on the topic of mass digitization one week from today,  
Thursday, May 21 from 1 - 4:30. You are invited.

The purpose of the symposium it to discuss, learn, and explore the  
possibilities and ramifications of huge amounts of digitized texts in  
libraries. Our speakers include:

   * Maura Marx (Executive Director, Open Knowledge Commons) - Ms.
     Marx will speak about the history of mass digitization
     initiatives, the Google Books settlement, and why we need to work
     towards a viable alternative, and current "open" plans and
     programs. She will describe how the old notions of privacy and
     confidentiality are disappearing in the profit driven commercial
     environment, where revenues come from better targeting and
     personalization. All of this impacts not only how we work today,
     but how future generations will access knowledge.

   * Gary Charbonneau (Indiana University) - Mr. Charbonneau will
     speak on Google Books and its impact on mass digitization efforts
     within the academy. Gary is currently the Systems Librarian at
     IU, of which he serves as the Google Digitizing Project Manager
     at the Herman B. Wells Library.  Google's innovative search
     technologies connect millions of people around the world with
     information every day, and its impact on mass digitization
     efforts have been extraordinary and in some ways, controversial.

   * Sian Meikle (University of Toronto) - Ms. Meikle will share
     many thought-provoking insights into the experiences with the
     Open Content Alliance (OCA) which is a collaborative effort of a
     group of cultural, technology, non-profit, and governmental
     organizations from around the world that helps build a permanent
     archive of multilingual digitized texts and multimedia materials.

Everybody is welcome. There is no registration fee or form. For more  
details, please see the website:

   http://www.library.nd.edu/symposium/

-- 
Eric Lease Morgan
Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department
Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame

(574) 631-8604