Yahoo has announced that it's working with the Internet Archive, the University of California, the University of Toronto, the National Archive in England, and others on a project to scan books in archives around the world and make them searchable via the Web (NYT coverage). The difference between this new "Open Content Alliance" and the Google Print library project: the Alliance will scan only public domain and freely licensed works, so that the entire collection can not only be searched but also downloaded for free. In addition, you'll be able to search for the books using any search engine -- including Google's.

Yahoo is finally earning its exclamation point.