Since September 2007, Boston College has been participating in a major digitization project taken up by the Boston Library Consortium (BLC) and the Open Content Alliance (OCA). As a university with deeply religious roots, BC has contributed its collection of rare and original writings of the Jesuit order.
Collectively, the BLC member libraries provide access to over 34 million volumes. With the libraries' total volumes recorded at 2,398,157 in 2006, BC's contribution accounts for about 7 percent of the volumes made available by the BLC.
The OCA and the BLC, of which BC is a member, teamed up to work on creating a master digital library of the BLC's member libraries' respective collections. Since then, scanning facilities have been established throughout the Northeast, including one at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square.
The BLC, founded in 1970, is an association of academic and research libraries located throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, dedicated to facilitating the sharing of information resources with the intent to advance research and learning.
The other 18 BLC members are the Boston Public Library, Boston University, Brandeis University, Brown University, the Marine Biological Laboratory & Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, MIT, Northeastern University, the State Library of Massachusetts, Tufts University, University of Connecticut, University of New Hampshire, Wellesley College, Williams College, and all five of the University of Massachusetts campuses.
The OCA represents the collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technological, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that are working to build a permanent online archive of digitized text and multimedia. According to the OCA Web site, the OCA was created in 2005 as a way to "offer broad, public access to a rich panorama of world culture."
The digitized books will be hosted by the Internet Archive and available to be indexed by any search engine, or at openlibrary.org. Internet Archive is a nonprofit company that is working on building a digital library of internet sites and other cultural artifacts. It provides free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.
Paul Nguyen, director of east coast scanning centers for Internet Archive, said that their objective is to create free and open access material for anyone who has an Internet connection. "We encourage other people to download and host the content themselves. Internet Archive isn't concerned about making profit or being recognized for hosting the content," Nguyen said. Rather, they are committed to making information freely available for all.
BC is focusing on digitizing some of the rarer materials in its collection, such as original editions of St. Ignatius' Exercitia Spiritualia, a central book in Jesuit teaching whose title is Latin for "spiritual exercises," and original letters written by St. Francis Xavier.
Kathleen Williams, manager of circulation services at O'Neill Library, said, "To try to make knowledge freely available is a great goal especially for an academic institution such as BC." Digitizing books is a way to take materials that might otherwise be inaccessible and make them easier to find and use. "I think it's great that BC is interested in this project," Nguyen said.
There are hopes that digitized libraries will help make research easier and cheaper. "People can search the actual contents of a book rather than just by parameters of author, title, and subject, all in the comfort of their own home," Nguyen said. Also, books that were difficult to check out through interlibrary loan due to their scarcity or fragile condition will be freely available for online viewing. "Prior to this, if there was a book in Minnesota that was too fragile to ship to someone here who requests it through interlibrary loan, then that person would not have been able to get the book," Nguyen said.
Collaborative efforts are being made to make sure book scanning is done legally and in accord with copyright laws. Only books to which member libraries own copyrights or books that were published before 1923 and are thus out of copyright are being scanned. The outcomes of the Google Print Library legal battles have yet to be determined, but for the time being, copyright laws limit the selection of books that make it into the digital library. "But the long-term goal is to have everything published scanned," Nguyen said.
Another facet of book selection is budgeting. Because each library pays 10 cents for every page that is scanned, BLC member libraries focus on their individual strengths. They are spending their initial dollars on scanning the books that are unique to the institution or best represent their mission. The Marine Biological Laboratory is focusing on their strengths in the marine sciences, while Tufts University is concentrating on scanning their extensive collection in the veterinary sciences.
BC has its rich Jesuit history and culture to contribute. Jonas Barciauskas, head of collection development at O'Neill Library, said, "We have a nice collection of books on the history of the Jesuit order. It's good for scholarly purposes, because Jesuit history provides records of periods spanning from 16th to the 21st century." BC libraries possess some books that are difficult to find elsewhere and thus are unknown or inaccessible to the general public. Also, some of the books were published before pH balanced, acid-free paper became the standard, so the pages are prone to disintegration. Digitizing such books will preserve them as well as make them more available to people who are unable to personally visit BC's libraries.
"We have digitized 170 titles so far. We're working our way through O'Neill's collections first for books on the history of the Jesuit order," Barciauskas said. So far, BC librarians have identified 300 titles through Quest Library Catalog that they would like to scan, but Barciauskas said that is only the beginning. Next they have to visually comb through the actual stacks for books that were not found through the Quest search. Also, there is the collection in the Burns Library which contains books that are much older.
From a theological and historical perspective, it is an important endeavor for BC as a Jesuit university. Paul Kolbet, a professor in the theology department, said, "You could easily say these books are important because they are the foundation of hundreds of Jesuit universities established throughout the world."
Kolbet said that the writings of the Jesuit order are simultaneously spiritual and highly practical - they teach internal awareness and active external engagement, and the positive relationship between faith and reason.
Now that the rich collection of Jesuit writings that BC libraries have will readily be available online, Kolbet said, "Hopefully these writings will contribute to promoting the wonderful ideals of the University."
"It's an exciting project to be a part of," Barciauskas said. "We are adding our little bit to the digital library that's being formed online."
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