Making Ends Meet

Library budgets across the country are being cut back and so administrators are having to find creative solutions to provide access. The solutions generaly come in the form of whatever is free of charge. Google has maed it possible for institutions (like Univ of Mich) to digitize collections that can then be more easily integrated into the library's database since the metadata is already marked up, in some cases down to letter by letter.

This could mean a great deal to braille and talking book libraries since it could mean access to the materials from public and special library collections without having to record a narration of the work or transcribe the work into braille. Instead the digitized version is converted directly to braille code or run through a speech generator (if you don't like speech generators, shut the hell up, Patrick Stewart isn't waiting around to narrate your book).

This collaboration would be made possible by Title 17 of the U.S. code that means that copyrighted material may be reproduced in an accessible format provided that format is not easily duplicatable. UM has limited the availability of their digitized collection to UM students only, thus no BTBL has access to this collection. This is resonable since the students and the taxpayers are footing the bill in that case and little ol' me here in Mass. has no business asking to borrow something unique to that collection.

It will be interesting to see how this will all pan out; how many jobs might be lost, what about "library as place?"