On May 19, 2009, at 1:08 PM, Roy Tennant wrote:

>> But hey, it looks good to be part of such a prestigious
>> group of libraries in partnering with Google to
>> deliver content freely* to the public!
>
> ...I think that's an overly pessimistic assessment. There
> is a growing corpus of freely available content being
> managed by the Hathi Trust[1],...

>
> [1] http://www.hathitrust.org/


Yea, but but.

Yes, I do think Google is making a book grab, especially when it comes  
to orphan works, but on the other hand, the HathiTrust is not bed of  
roses either because even for public domain works it is not possible  
to download the whole book without going through semi-heroic efforts.

I applaud the Internet Archive and the Open Content Alliance's  
efforts.  archive.org++

BTW, we are sponsoring a mini-symposium on the topic of mass  
digitization here at Notre Dame, tomorrow:

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

-- 
Eric Lease Morgan
Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame

(574) 631-8604