Investing in an open, universal digital commons will help ease the current economic crisis by creating jobs, equipping workers with 21st-century skills, and laying a foundation for innovation and national competitiveness in business and research.  ...Talk abounds about the need for projects that will be “shovel ready” in a matter of months, but that phrase belies the reality of our infrastructure.  Roads and bridges are essential, of course, but we should also build our digital infrastructure and equip workers with skills they can use in the years ahead – skills for the information age.

 

A large-scale effort to digitize library and related cultural-memory holdings would be an effective response to the mounting problems that challenge America.  Beyond retraining workers for technology jobs, such a project would bring high-quality historical, scientific, and cultural materials into every home and workplace.  That increased access would give businesses, state and local governments, and job seekers a leg up and would enrich education at all levels by bringing the world’s collective knowledge to parents, teachers, and students.

 

But a digital library for the new millennium should reach beyond books.  Consider the value of giving every citizen free access to course materials, including nonprint media, developed throughout the nation.  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has already demonstrated the strong demand for its faculty members’ lecturers and related resources with its Open Courseware project.  Add to those materials all the nonclassified studies emerging from government agencies and the results of scientific research conducted at universities and institutes...

 

The digital commons project is “shovel ready.”  We have the capacity to put library, museum, and related collections online.  Many libraries have been selectively scanning their collections for more than a decade, though funds have been too scarce to allow them to undertake comprehensive digitization.  And although some copyright owners have expressed concerns about digitization initiatives, the project could avoid legal conflicts by including only materials that are already in the public domain....

 

At the current pace, it would take generations to bring entire libraries and other cultural-memory collections to the open Web.  But with an injection of funds, the rate could be quickly increased.  On the basis of current practices, we know that in short order, up to 10,000 people could be trained and put to work scanning books, manuscripts, journals, and other materials in library collections.  If the scanning encompassed materials outside of libraries, that number would soar.  To create an open, universal digital library of 10 million books would require $300-million.