Wikiversity:Library

Ought/could Wikiversity have a library?

Standard libraries have a great deal of copyrighted material for people to view and utilize. How could Wikiversity create a library? Would this be desirable?

Libraries that have traditionally have had just printed materials are moving somewhat to digital materials.

At some locations what seems to happen is that digital copies of books (Ebooks) are available for checkout. Only one person can checkout an eBook at a time, view it for a certain amount of time, and then have their access revoked when their time is up. This seems to be a sort of DRM. Could DRM technology ever have a place within the scope of Wikiversity or the Wikimedia Foundation? Could something like this be done legally?

Could there be open source-like DRM? Could we come up with a less stigmatized term other than DRM?

How does this fall within the scope of the Wikimedia Foundation?

 * Please refer to the missions and visions of the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikiversity and then put an answer here (it does or it doesn't) or create a consensual answer.

How might this be implemented?

 * Users could donate books to the Wikimedia Foundation or Wikiversity, and then these books could be digitized and DRM (or some like functionality to ensure the integrity of the works' copyrights) applied. Additionally functionality may need to be built into Wikimedia software.

But really, would Wikimedians ever allow this to happen?

 * Time will tell.

Are there other ways to achieve what this would aim to accomplish?

 * What do you think?
 * Why not go the other way around ? Let's bring Wikiversity to the libraries who already offer such services. We would save us the costs + time to create a collection - we would also be no "threat" to them since we use their services. Libraries could offer WV or other sister projects access by login + pwd. e.g. find for Wikibooks + Wikisource specific partners, try to partner with Google books, ... Erkan Yilmaz uses the Chat (try) 22:10, 13 July 2008 (UTC)