After writing the following email, I found out that your university - Brandeis is already partnering with the Open Content Alliance to do the scanning:
http://www.blc.org/news/blc_oca_release.html I am including the email below anyway for the benefit of other list members. ----- [DISCLAIMER: My company does printing for the HebrewBooks.org project] The largest non-profit project focusing on Hebrew language books is the one run by the Society for Preservation of Hebrew Books and is accessible online for free at: http://www.hebrewbooks.org They currently have 11,000 titles. The person that runs this project is Chaim Rosenberg whom I believe spoke at a session called "So You Want to Digitize Your Library?" at the 2007 AJL convention. The email to reach him is: [EMAIL PROTECTED] There are also two semi-commercial projects: Otzar HaChochmah - www.otzar.biz Otzros haTorah - http://www.virtualgeula.com/mkp/ ----------- In regards to funding, The Dorot Foundation contributed to the JNUL scanning initiative so you might want to try them. You can also speak to Google Books and The OpenContent Alliance/The Internet Archive about coming in and digitizing your library but I don't know what their terms are and they will probably be more interested in doing your entire library, not just the Hebrew stuff. Here is some info: http://books.google.com/googlebooks/library.html http://books.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=43741&topic=9082 and http://www.opencontentalliance.org/ There is also a project run by Amazon.com through their on demand printing subsidiary BookSurge which is joint with a scanning company called Kirtas. What this project does is digitizes out of print books and makes them available for purchasing via Amazon. Their press release is here: http://www.librarytechnology.org/ltg-displayarticle.pl?RC=12605 I don't know the specifics in regards to whether they give you the PDFs and the financial terms. Hope this helps, Yakov Shafranovich Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
