Digital Book Projects

As e-books gain ground, projects to digitize books owned by libraries continue to be a mixed picture. Google continues to gain new participants in its book scanning project, but concerns remain about restrictions that Google places on these digital images. Most recently, Microsoft announced that it is abandoning its book digitization project, and that it is turning over the already-scanned digital copies of those books to the home institutions. The Open Content Alliance continues to make headway, but the funding for most of its digitization comes efforts comes either through limited grants or from the libraries themselves. Nonetheless, interest in, the value of, and the desire for book digitization remains extremely high, and it is clearly a trend that is likely to increase.

This page is part of the Environmental Scan, one of NELINET's Planning, Assessment & Accreditation Initiatives.