Million Book Project (MBP)

Gloriana St. Clair

Johns Hopkins UniversityFebruary 5, 2003

Thesis

• Project has great potential to make good information available to more scholars.

• The future of libraries is digital.

Main Points

• Why?• Genesis: Leaders, Partners • Realities: Collections and logistics • Dreams: Comments about the

vision

Why?

“Libraries are very unevenly distributed across the world and within countries. Even in the U.S. there are enormous differences. Now technology makes possible a universal world library in which every person has access to

anything written.”

“In the end, this will be Vannevar Bush’s Memex.”

- Michael Lesk, Internet Archive

Bush, “As We May Think” Atlantic Monthly (July 1945)

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm

Why?

Genesis

Leaders

• Co-Directors: Raj Reddy and Gloriana St. Clair

• Michael Shamos: intellectual property; e-commerce

• Jaime Carbonell: machine translation; information mining; auto-summarization

Leaders

• Gabrielle Michalek: pioneered five digitization projects

• Erika Linke: collections; intellectual property

• Denise Troll Covey: digital libraries; user studies

Partners

• National Science Foundation

2001 $665,6002002 $1,000,0002003 $1,000,0002004 $1,000,000

for equipment and travel

Partners

• Carnegie Mellon University• Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh• Indiana University• National Agriculture Library• OCLC• Penn State University• Stanford University• University of California,

Berkeley• University of Washington

Partners

• China: Beijing University • Chinese Academy of Science • Fudan University • Ministry of Education of China • Nanjing University • State Planning Commission of China • Tsinghua University • Zhejiang University

• India: Arulmigu Kalasalingam College of Engineering • Goa University • Indian Institute of Science • Indian Institute of Information Technology–Allahabad • International Institute of Information Technology–Hyderabad • Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation • Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams • Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology and Research Academy • University of Pune

• At an internet café in Hyderabad …

Collections

• BCL– 60,000 “best” for college libraries• U. S. government documents • British Parliamentary Papers• Partners’ unique cultural treasures• University press negotiations• Copyright clearance projects for targeted subject areas

Constraints

• The collection must be composed of many sub-collections.

• Librarians will consulted to ensure solid selection criteria.

• Copyright is a serious barrier to an effective effort.

Research Initiatives

• Machine translation• Massive distributed

database• Storage formats• Use of digital libraries• Distribution and

sustainability

• Security• Search engines• Image processing• Optical Character

Recognition (OCR)• Language processing• Copyright laws

Distribution and Sustainability

• Library of Congress, Digital Preservation

• OCLC• RLG• STOR family• University presses• Commercial vendors

Newest Developments

• Over 1 million pages scanned at one center in India

• Famous Hyderabad library to be scanned

• Million Book Project FAQ http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/MBP_FAQ.html

Thank You and Q & A

Gloriana St. Clair

Carnegie Mellon University

gstclair@andrew.cmu.edu