Below is a new press release of interest. Auraria
Library has loaded over 100,000 records of open access ebooks into their local
catalog. These have now been passed through to Prospector so that all
libraries will have access to this valuable historical collection. If you
would like to see some sample records from this collection do an OCLC number
search under “mbooks” or do an author search using “Hathi
Trust”. Since these books are electronic as well as “open
access” (free) they can be viewed online by anyone.
Thanks to Jeffrey Beall at Auraria Library for his working
on adding this collection.
George
Tens of Thousands
of Open Access Digitized Books
Now Available
Through the Prospector Catalog
Denver, Colorado, April 10, 2009
Library users in Colorado now
have access to tens of thousands of additional open-access digitized books and
serials through the Prospector Library Catalog. The digitized items originate
from the University of Michigan, a partner in the Google Books digitization
project and a member of a consortium of libraries called Hathi Trust. Last year
the University of Michigan made available bibliographic records for many of the
out-of-copyright titles that Google digitized from its collections. The
University then made available online files for each of the digitized works.
The bibliographic records were
acquired and enhanced by librarians at the Auraria Library in Denver. After the
records were loaded into Skyline, the Auraria Library online catalog, they were
uploaded to Prospector, the union catalog of the Colorado Alliance of Research
Libraries. Now library patrons from across Colorado have access to the online
books via the Prospector catalog. Except for the University of Michigan where
the books originated, the Auraria Library was the first library in the nation
to make these books available to its users.
There are over 105,000 digitized
books and serials freely available in this initial phase of the project. They
cover a broad range of topics in the humanities and sciences and are in many
different languages. They represent the rich collections found at the
University of Michigan and complement local collections held in Colorado
libraries. Moreover, the books are "open-access," which means they are
in the public domain either because they were published before 1923 or because
they are a government publication and therefore not copyrighted.
About ten million books are being
digitized each year around the world. Increasingly, these online books and
serials will be accessible through library online catalogs like Prospector.
This in turn means that more information once available only by visiting a
library will be easily accessible to all Coloradoans through the Internet.
Through this and other similar projects, Colorado libraries will take advantage
of book digitization and will continue to offer more and more materials to
library users across the state.
For more information about
Skyline and these records contact: Jeffrey Beall at Auraria Library ([log in to unmask]).
For more information about
Prospector contact: George Machovec ([log in to unmask])
George
Machovec
Associate
Director
Colorado
Alliance of Research Libraries
3801
E. Florida, Suite 515
Denver,
CO 80210
(303)
759-3399 x.101
(303)
759-3363 (fax)