Could EC Digitzation Debate Pave the Way for a Competitor to Google?

By Liz Bury writing for Publishing Perpectves

LONDON: Deep in the Bodleian Library, the scholarly heart of Oxford University, England, is a locked room emitting, I imagine, a low hum. This is Google's digitization suite, the control center of its scanning operation at the library, into which no Bodleian staffer may enter. That, at least, is the story doing the rounds among British librarians, for whom Google has become a kind of fearful giant. The Bodleian, or "the bod" as it is affectionately known, is one of the UK's six Legal Deposit Libraries, meaning that it has the legal obligation to receive a copy of any book published in Britain, in an arrangement dating back to 1610. (read on ...)