THE PROJECT
What is the Cornell/Microsoft project?
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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.
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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.
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Are there any other libraries involved?
The University of Toronto, the Microsoft has entered into agreements with the UniversityofToronto, British Library, the New York Public Library, UniversityofCaliforniathe University of California, Yale University, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the AmericanMuseum American Museum of Veterinary Medicine are also collaborating with Microsoft.
How does this help faculty and students?
When surveyed about their needs, the Library's users rate access to full-text online as one of their highest priorities, so this partnership will enable us to respond to student and faculty expectations. Although Cornell has a long history of digitizing books for scholarly access, this project will make substantially more books available for these purposes much sooner than would otherwise be possible.
SELECTION
How many books are being digitized?
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We continue to work on refining our selection policy. The first batch of materials sent were public domain monographs from monographs (pre-1923) from Olin Library and Engineering Library that are in English. Some SSome of the subject areas to strengths in the CUL that could theoretically be digitized in subsequent shipments include agriculture, American history, English literature, astronomy, food and wine, general engineering, the history of science, home economics, hospitality and travel, human sexuality, labor relations, Native American materials, ornithology, veterinary medicine, and women's studies.
What is not being selected?
Currently no copyrighted or material, non-English language books, or serials are under consideration for digitization.
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Our experience digitizing library material suggests that digitizing and making "low-use" material available online will boost their use and will increase the long-term returns on our investment in the purchase, storage, and maintenance of Cornell's extensive print collections.
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Currently we will not be scanning any copyrighted material.
USER IMPACT
How can I tell if a book is charged out to digitization?
The general public will be 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
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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.
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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?
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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.
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All books will be made freely available to the world.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Who can I contact for more info?
Contact Oya Rieger (oyr1@cornell.edu) for further information.