IBM and the European Union are collaborating on a mass digitization project called on IMPACT (IMProving Access to Text).

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

IBM and the EU have expanded their research collaboration, which now includes more than two-dozen national libraries, research institutes, universities, and companies across Europe to provide new technology that will enable highly-accurate digitization of rare and culturally significant historical texts on a massive scale. Unlike past digitization projects where the result has been static, online libraries of texts, this unique widescale effort, called IMPACT (IMProving Access to Text), will offer new tools and best practices to institutions across Europe that will enable them to efficiently and accurately continue to produce quality digital replicas of historically significant texts and make them widely available, editable and searchable online.

Funded by the EU, IMPACT's research combines the power of new innovative Web-enabled adaptive optical character recognition (OCR) software with "crowd computing" technology—a fast growing concept designed around individuals, or 'crowds,' enhancing a process or product by sharing their knowledge and expertise to dramatically improve its quality and efficiency. Combined, these technologies will allow institutions for the first time to adapt digitization to the idiosyncrasies of old fonts, anomalies and even vocabularies–while reducing error rates by 35% and substitution rates by 75%.

The Wellcome Trust has approved a £3.9 million budget for the creation of the Wellcome Digital Library.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Wellcome Library today announces the launch of an ambitious digitisation project, to provide free, online access to its collections, including archives and papers from Nobel prize-winning scientists Francis Crick, Fred Sanger and Peter Medawar. . . .

The Wellcome Trust has approved a budget of £3.9 million to begin a two-year pilot project on the theme of Modern Genetics and its Foundations. Drawing on the Wellcome Library's internationally renowned collections, content will include 1400 books on genetics and heredity published between 1850 and 1990, along with important archives including the papers of Francis Crick and his original drawings of the proposed structure of DNA. . . .

In addition to content from the Wellcome Library, up to £1 million of the fund will be used to support digitisation of relevant material from partner institutions in the UK and overseas.

Users will be able to access the repository following completion of the pilot phase of digitisation, slated for completion in September 2012.

The NSF has issued a program solicitation for Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections. Total amount available across all awards: $10,000,000. Full proposal deadline: December 10, 2010.

Here's an excerpt:

This program seeks to create a national resource of digital data documenting existing biological collections and to advance scientific knowledge by improving access to digitized information (including images) residing in vouchered scientific collections across the United States. The information associated with various collections of organisms, such as geographic distribution, environmental habitat data, phenology, information about associated organisms, collector field notes, tissues and molecular data extracted from the specimens, etc. is a rich resource for providing the baseline from which to further biodiversity research and provide critical information about existing gaps in our knowledge of life on earth. The national resource will be structured at three levels: a national hub, thematic networks based on collaborative groups of collections, and the physical collections. This resource will build upon a sizable existing national investment in curation of the physical objects in scientific collections and contribute vitally to scientific research and technology interests in the United States. It will be an invaluable tool in understanding the biodiversity and societal consequences of climate change, species invasions, natural disasters, the spread of disease vectors and agricultural pests, and other biological issues.

Chapters from Digitization in the Real World: Lessons Learned from Small to Medium-Sized Digitization Projects, which was published by the Metropolitan New York Library Council, are being made available from the book's blog in a series of posts.

• "DIY Digitization: Creating a Small-Scale Digital Zine Exhibit"
• "Managing Rights in a Medium-Scale Audio Digitization Project"
• "Developing an Institutional Repository at Southern New Hampshire University: Year One"
• "Digital Treasures: The Evolution of a Digital Repository in Massachusetts"

Read more about it at "Collect Them All: Four Chapters from Digitization in the Real World Available For Free, Thirty More Coming Soon."

The European Commission has released Assessment of the Orphan Works Issue and Costs for Rights Clearance.

Here's an excerpt:

Orphan works form a significant part of any digitisation project and the survey shows high percentages of orphan works for almost all categories of works, especially among photographs, and audiovisual materials.

• A conservative estimate of the number of orphan books as a percentage of in copyright books across Europe puts the number at 3 million orphan books (13 % of the total number of in-copyright books). The older the books the higher the percentage of orphan works.
• When handling requests for using older film material, film archives from across Europe categorized after a search for right holders 129,000 film works as orphan which could therefore not be used. Works that can be presumed to be orphan without actually searching for the right holders augments the figure to approximately 225 000 film works.
• A digitisation project in the UK found that 95 % of newspapers from before 1912 are orphan. Also, a survey amongst museums in the UK found that the rights holders of 17 million photographs (that is 90% of the total collections of photographs of the museums) could not be traced.

The Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy has released The Economics of Copyright and Digitisation: A Report on the Literature and the Need for Further Research.

Here's an excerpt:

The Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (SABIP) has commissioned this report in order to inform its future research agenda. One task is to undertake a critical overview of the theoretical and empirical economic literature on copyright and unauthorised copying. On the basis of this literature, two further aims of this report are to: (1) identify the salient issues for copyright policy in the context of digitisation; and (2) formulate specific research questions that should be addressed in order to inform copyright policy.

The Smithsonian has released Creating a Digital Smithsonian: Digitization Strategic Plan.

Here's an excerpt:

How long will digitization take? How much will it cost? Right now, we are not sure, and the plan’s number-one task is to determine timelines, cost parameters, and guidelines for setting priorities about what will be digitized when. While we will not digitize all of our collections, the price tag is still daunting, especially considering that many of our objects are three-dimensional and therefore more difficult to digitize. Added to the direct cost of digitization are the staff hours needed to find and research objects and data and the rights associated with them.

Regardless of the specific digitization strategies we pursue, the investment will be enormous. This accounts for a key goal in the digitization plan: securing additional financial and human capital. As noted, digitization is an ongoing process that will require ongoing resources. We have been digitizing, and will continue to do so as funds become available, but from now on we will work across the Institution from a single plan that outlines a comprehensive and systemic approach.

The Swiss National Library has launched eBooks on Demand.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Swiss National Library (NL) now offers a digitisation on request service for out of copy-right books. This new paid service is known as "eBooks on Demand" (EOD). The NL already lists more than 100,000 books available for digitisation, which can be provided as a PDF to customers. . . .

To date, more than 100,000 books (mainly older publications, since only they are not under copyright) are available on request in digitised form, and can be delivered to users as an e-mail attachment, or by post on a CD.

Such works are marked in the online catalogue Helveticat (www.nb.admin.ch/helveticat) with the EOD symbol, which serves as a link to the order form. Submitting a form triggers an invoice; once this is paid, the reader receives the eBook. On request, for a small supplement, a paperback may also be supplied.

"eBooks on Demand" is a project of the NL and over 20 other libraries in ten European countries (www.books2ebooks.eu).

JISC has issued a call for proposals for e-Content and Digitisation Programme Impact & Embedding of Digitised Resources grants (maximum funding a project is £40,000).

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The JISC invites institutions to submit funding proposals for projects to be funded through its e-Content and Digitisation Programme to address the impact and embedding of digitised resources. The purpose of this call is twofold:

1. Firstly, to facilitate institutions in carrying out an analysis of the impact of their digitised resources/collections that have been live for at least one calendar year
2. To develop strategies and practical solutions to ensure the increased use and impact of the resources in teaching, learning and research within higher education

Rose Holley, Manager of the Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program at the National Library of Australia, has self-archived "Ramping It Up: 10 Lessons Learned in Mass Digitisation" in E-LIS.

Here's an excerpt:

In 2007 the National Library of Australia (NLA) began a large-scale newspaper digitisation program that aimed to digitise one million pages (10 million articles) per year, with a view to increasing the volume over time and ramping up digitisation to include books and journals as well as newspapers. By the end of 2009 the NLA had learnt 10 key lessons about ramping up its digitisation activities into a mass-scale operation.