Electronic Text Center Discussion Group at ALA

[Robert Scott]

If you are going to be at the Mid-Winter meeting of the American Library 
Association in Boston, I urge you to come to the gathering of the 
Electronic Text Center Discussion group, which will take place from 2:00 
to 4:00 in the Copley Room of the Hilton Back Bay on Saturday, January 15, 
2004.

  The main topic of our meeting is one that I am sure is on many of your 
minds  . Google's recently unveiled plan for extensive digitization of 
material from the collections of Stanford, Michigan, Harvard, Oxford, and 
New York Public and the potentially revolutionary implications of that 
project for the electronic collection building now taking place in so many 
libraries across this country.  I am pleased to report that Adam Smith, 
project manager of the Google Print program, has agreed to come to our 
meeting to answer our questions and to get a better sense of the hopes and 
possible concerns that this revolutionary project has raised in the 
broader Etext community.  I hope that those of you who represent some of 
the participating libraries will also be able to attend and lend your 
voices to what I trust will be a very interesting discussion.

If time permits, I would also like to at least begin addressing what was 
originally to have been the main theme of our meeting, namely, a 
discussion about slightly refocusing and rethinking the program of this 
group, and the selection of a new convener.

I look forward to seeing you in Boston.

Bob Scott
Head, Electronic Text Service
Columbia University Libraries