“Harvard\u2019s library is making public the information on more than 12 million books, videos, audio recordings, images, manuscripts, maps, and more things inside Harvard\u2019s 73 libraries.<\/p>\n
“Harvard can\u2019t put the actual content of much of this material online, owing to intellectual property laws, but this so-called metadata of things like titles, publication or recording dates, book sizes, or descriptions of what is in the video is also considered highly valuable material. Frequently descriptors of things like audio recordings are more valuable for search engines than the material itself. Search engines frequently rely on metadata over content, particularly when it can\u2019t easily be scanned and understood.<\/p>\n
[…]<\/p>\n
“The release follows Harvard\u2019s decision, via its\u00a0Office of Scholarly Communications<\/a>\u00a0to release for free much of the published research from its faculty. The metadata will be available for bulk download both from Harvard and from the\u00a0Digital Public Library of America, which is an effort to create a national public library online.”<\/p>\n