Michael Liedtke of the Associated Press writes (via The Desert News):

Internet powerhouse Yahoo! Inc. is setting out to build a vast online library of copyrighted books that pleases publishers - something rival Google, Inc. hasn’t been able to achieve.

The Open Content Alliance, a project that Yahoo! is backing with several other partners, plans to provide digital versions of books, academic papers, video and audio. Much of the material will consist of copyrighted material voluntarily submitted by publishers and authors, said David Mandelbrot, Yahoo!’s vice president of search content.

Other participants in the alliance announced today include Adobe Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., the Internet Archive, O’Reilly Media Inc., the University of California and the University of Toronto.

Although Yahoo will power the search engine located at www.opencontentalliance.org, all the content will be made available so it can be indexed by all the other major search engines, including Google’s.

[Continue reading Yahoo! alliance to build a vast online library]