digitization for Canadian books: Alouette

A major effort to digitize millions of books and other documents at libraries is beginning across Canada.

Canadian research libraries have formed a digitization alliance called Alouette Canada to get their books online.

The process involves scanning the millions of books available in Canadian libraries so they can be read by internet users. Parts of the virtual library should be available beginning next year — and it'll be free to use.

Tim Mark, executive director of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, says Alouette is taking on a large project that will extend over several years.

"The initial estimate is three to four million titles so the scope is huge," he says. "I think it's fair to say that librarians and research libraries in particular have seen the vision and the possibility and the potential for universal access to all knowledge."

University of Toronto chief librarian Carol Moore will head a group of 27 major Canadian academic research libraries that have joined the Alouette Canada project.

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The Canadian group is working with a big international effort to digitize books, the Open Content Alliance, based in San Francisco.   Canada's libraries will be co-operating with international libraries, such as the U.S. Library of Congress and the British Library, which already have large digitized collections.

via CBC Arts: Canadian libraries join race to digitize books, 29 Dec 2005.

Also reported on CBC Radio - World at Six on the same date, at 22 minutes in.
(Note: I don't think these shows are archived, so the audio is probably no longer available after Dec 30.)

As far as I understand they will be scanning out-of-copyright books only, and making them available for free.  They are aiming at something like 3-4 million books of historical significance to start.

The CBC story seems to be the only information available about this project.

I found it blogged at Ian's Messy Desk.

UPDATE 2006-01-03: Presumably this is related to (or just a new name for?) the CARL Open Canada Digitization Initiative that I blogged about on November 25, 2005.

As a member of CARL, CISTI will of course be participating in this initiative.

UPDATE 2006-01-23: There is also a brief write-up at KnowledgeSpeak.  Unfortunately it does not appear to be possible to link to it, but you can search on "alouette".

Alouette will accelerate the digitisation process by making available rare documents such as fragile works from the 16th century, Banting and Best's papers on their discovery of insulin and crucial documents related to the history of Newfoundland from ... Memorial University.

UPDATE 2006-06-24:  The AlouetteCanada initiative has officially launched.