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While the temptation is great to hook up with one of the big tech companies to scan books and put them on the Internet, a number of libraries are choosing to go with the Open Content Alliance instead.

Companies like Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) offer to scan the books, paying to do the process, which comes in at about $30 per book.

The cost of that for the libraries is the companies want the books to be searchable only on their search engines, forcing people to use them to find uploaded electronic books.

Microsoft and Yahoo seem to be more open, as they're listed as contributors on the OCA site. Google on the other hand isn't as open: “Libraries that agree to work with Google must agree to a set of terms, which include making the material unavailable to other commercial search services.  Microsoft places a similar restriction on the books it converts to electronic form.  The Open Content Alliance, by contrast, is making the material available to any search service.”

While Microsoft has a similar restriction, it is removed as far as it relates to academic purposes in reference to institutional use.

Backers of the Open Content Alliance say it's a matter of principle. The only problem I see is large libraries have more of a luxury to do it on their own and are able absorb the costs, as they have a large donor list. Smaller libraries may not have that option, and so may benefit more from corporate involvement, even with some of the restrictions connected to use of their search engines only to find the books.

It looks like we'll see a variety of options in the future if we want to access electronic books. We'll search for them through commercial search engines specifically, or through any search engine in general for books uploaded through the OCA.