Dear Balki: I agree with you. The Digital Library Initiative (in India) should negotiate with Internet Archives (OCA) and Google with the backing of the Government of India. Please talk about these aspects in the session on Open Access at the Science Congress in H'bad. Google's trouble looks to be temporary. Most legal experts in the USA including Lawrence Lessig have opined that the law suits against Google filed by the Authors' Guild and five publishers are rather weak and that the verdict will be in favour of Google (fair use clause). Best wishes. Arun

Dear Arun: I am right now with Brewster Kale and also the scientists - Sullivan from Google- India and China are planning to join the OCA- As you know the Internet Archives are our partners - they also host the books under the million books project- all three of us - The MBP team, Google and OCA realized that we have complimentary strengths- We have the great edge because of - CMU- IISc& Indian Universities, Egypt, Australia and China Universities- a great research strength- what was displayed today is almost mind boggling research by the MBP team- The out reach of OCA and the disseminating power of Google- we have mnearly 170,000 books in India, 500,000 books in China and 100,000 books between Alexandria and OCa - we are targetting to host 1 Million books between all of us in a combined portal before next year annual meeting- ne sinle Million books portal-

As you know Google's respect for our efforts is very great- regarding all libraries in India joining the OCA or Google - you must think twice- oogle is in trouble already- the best is to let the DLI interact through the government with outsiders instead of every library interacting with outsiders- the national perspective will be lost- We had done this before and wasted money like hell- every one holding a consrtium and talking about diitization- let us not do this again and waste ovt money-

Regards Balki Dear Balki:

...

I have a specific question for you, as you are a pioneer and the first in India to set up both an open access institutional archive for research papers (at IISc) and the Million Books Digial Library.

Should not major Indian libraries join the Open Content Alliance (promoted by Brewster Kahle) and/ or the Google Library? Major western libraries are joining one or the other, but our libraries have some unique collections in the areas of philosophy, religion, literature in our own languages, some of them (e.g. Sanskrit and Tamil) older than all the western languages, indigenous systems of medicine, etc.

Please take the lead and make our books widely known and read around the world. Generations of Indians will begrateful to you! NCSI could be the nodal point. I am sure the Knowledge Commission and the Department of Culture can be approached for any funds required. Microsoft (USA) has pledged to scan 150,000 books. May be you could ask Microsoft (India) and other IT majors to lend support.

Best wishes.

Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam]