The OCA work agenda for 2006

The Open Content Alliance has released its Work Agenda for 2006. It has launched six working groups to select works for digitization, solicit new contributing institutions, and advise on preservation, book formatting, workflow, and data transfer to the Internet Archive. Each of the groups welcomes public comments and suggestions. Excerpt on the rest of the agenda:

Our focus has been on the OCA's first year. A key milestone will be a public event we are planning for October 2006 to demonstrate the power of collaborative and open efforts to build joint collections. That focus informs the agenda for the coming year. The OCA will initially concentrate on digitally reformatted monographs and serials which represent diverse times, regions and subjects which are in the public domain or available under a Creative Commons license. In other words, the OCA is initially interested in the broad range of digitized documents that are in our libraries and archives. For an October 2006 event, we would like to focus on materials that reflect the history, people, culture, and ecology of North America. This decision is in part a practical one. It establishes essential priorities for the OCA while emphasizing collection depth as a means of encouraging the development of value-added services. It also reflects the general orientation of the initial collections that have been offered to the OCA. (At this stage, OCA is not harvesting metadata.)... The Internet Archive is continuing its role in administering the Open Content Alliance (OCA), but Rick Prelinger, interim OCA director, will unfortunately follow through with his plan to return to the world of moving images. He will help with recruiting OCA staff, and any suggestions for a great Executive Director would be most welcome. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has indicated that it may initially help support this position.