British Library Readers Group

A library bigger than any building

An ambitious project to create an online catalogue of every book in every language ever published is under way. Public goodwill is not in doubt, but some libraries remain to be convinced.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6924022.stm

'Stephen Bury, head of European and American Collections at the British Library in London, has some reservations about contributing to the Open Library project.

"In the short term, I don't think we will send them a copy of our catalogue. We only have limited resources and we need them to concentrate their efforts on our own digitisation projects," he says.

"We have always supported digitisation, and the more the merrier. But there's some scepticism as to whether one day the Open Library might become a commercial site with adverts and so on."

Mr Bury was not keen on the idea of allowing ordinary people to edit library catalogues themselves.

"I think there's a need for balance and some degree of control. You might get people maliciously changing things." '