Knowledge unlocked

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: books has set them free and people in all countries can have access through the web. So, digitisation has freed knowledge,” says Gloriana. “The future of libraries is digital and that was my platform when I came to CMU and I met Raj Reddy, who had already started the Million Book Project,” adds Gloriana.

Last year MBP digitised over one million books that are now freely available on the Internet. Included in the digital repository are thousands of books in various languages from English and Chinese to Telugu, Kannada and Urdu. Many of these books were scanned in various scanning centres in India, including the mega scanning centre in Hyderabad, points out Gloriana.

As I discovered most of this information is being made available through open access. But, what is open access? “Open access is material that is on the web free to read,” says Gloriana. “Technology has provided a platform, and then there is the Intellectual Property issue. And Intellectual Property (IP) issue is not open access and you need to get licenses,” she points out. The IP issue is being addressed by many organisations to help make knowledge and information freely available and the recent initiative by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is a

case in point.

NIH is the largest funder of medical research in the world and its budget runs into billions of dollars. Recently NIH announced that recipients of funding will have to deposit a copy of their work to NIH, which will then put that research work on the web for free. This is being dubbed as one of the biggest initiatives in the open access movement in the US. Now, with that kind of open access initiative it is bound to accelerate and spur new research and development in different parts of the world. But, what is needed to get to this almost free knowledge for millions of people around the world is easy and economical access to the internet. That is one of the key show stoppers for millions around the world and there are a band of dedicated volunteers, technologists, and others working on creating cheap and robust solutions to provide that easy Internet access.