...

The Cornell-Microsoft partnership is a win-win situation for Cornell.  By working with Microsoft, we participate in content selection decisions to ensure that scholarly materials that support Cornell's academic programs are available in digital form. Microsoft will give the Library high-quality digital images of all the materials, allowing the Library to provide worldwide access through its own digital library and to share the content with non-commercial academic initiatives and non-profit organizations. Lastly, the agreement with Microsoft is non-exclusive and the Library is free to join other partnerships with the same or different content in digitizing its collection.

...

Microsoft is funding the digitization of the material ---— this includes all costs associated with scanning as well as support for staff to pull books.  Cornell University Library is contributing staff and infrastructure to support the long-term preservation of the digitized files. 

...

Are there any other libraries involved? 

Microsoft has entered into agreements with the UniversityofTorontoUniversity of Toronto, the British Library, the New York Public Library, UniversityofCaliforniathe University of California, and the AmericanMuseum American Museum of Veterinary Medicine.

How does this help faculty and students?

...

The general public will able to tell that items are charged out, but it will not be apparent from the public catalog that these items are charged out for digitzationdigitization. Public service staff can assist users by accessing the MARC record in the online catalog. The 903 field in the MARC record will reflect that the book has been sent to be digitized.  It will have "Kirtas" and the barcode in the field. For exampleFor example:   903 __ |a Kirtas |d 20060901 |p 31924029885658

...

Books will be checked out for the project for up to 3 months.   We hope as the workflow work flow processes become smoother that the actual time the books will be out of the library will be shorter.   If you request (hold/recall) a title that is checked out for this project, your request will automatically be transferred to Interlibrary Loan or Borrow Direct ensuring that you receive the title you need as quickly as possible.

...

No.  During the first year of the project we are only digitizing books in the public domain.   We are currently focusing on books published prior to 1923.  

ACCESS

How will I be able to access the digitized books?

...

We expect to start receiving the digitized images in August 2007.   The LSDI Access group is in the process of assessing different delivery options.  One of the scenarios reviewed involves linking the PDF versions of the books to the Voyager records as they start arriving, however we don't anticipate implementation of such a system until 2008.

...