Harvard University is establishing its own digital library of the world, and it will rival the work that Google is doing. From the Boston Globe:
“Who will control knowledge in the future?
“So far, the most likely answer to that question has been a private company: Google. Since 2004 Google Books has been scanning books and putting them online; the company says it has already scanned more than 15 million. Google estimates there are about 130 million books in the world, and by 2020, it plans to have scanned them all.
“Now, however, a competitor may be emerging. Last year, Robert Darnton, a cultural historian and director of Harvard University’s library system, began to raise the prospect of creating a public digital library. This library would include the digitized collections of the country’s great research institutions, but it would also bring in other media – video, music, film – as well as the collection of Web pages maintained by the Internet Archive.”
