Google’s global library
p2pnet.net News:- “Even before we started Google, we dreamed of making the incredible breadth of information that librarians so lovingly organize searchable online,” said Larry Page, Google co-founder and president of products.
His statement came with the announcement that as an expansion of the Google Print program, the company plans to digitally scan Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan, University of Oxford, and New York Public Library books so they’ll be searchable online.
Read like that, it seems amazing. But of course, Google won’t be scanning quite all the books.
And Page’s comment notwithstanding, the move isn’t entirely altruistic.
“For publishers and authors, this expansion of the Google Print program will increase the visibility of in and out of print books, and generate book sales via ‘Buy this Book’ links and advertising,” it says
Moreover, as Freep/News/Michigan points out, although users will get access to many older texts with no copyright restrictions, “under copyright laws, Google will only be able to provide snippets from many of the libraries’ books – sometimes only two or three sentences that contain the Web surfer’s search terms.
“It’s a different story for books that are in the public domain,” Freep has Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association, thinks the value of helping people from anywhere in the world view a library’s special collections is “almost priceless,” saying, going on:
“Still, he is ‘underwhelmed’ with the idea of short excerpts of copyrighted books, which he says provide information that – unless read as part of the whole book – is limited and often useless. ‘The English language with words out of context doesn’t really mean anything,” says Gorman’.”
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See:-
incredible breadth – Google Checks Out Library Books, Google, December 14, 2004
Google Print – Google launches book search, p2pnet, October 7, 2004
snippets – Freep/News/Michigan, December 14, 2004
December 17th, 2004 at 4:06 am
Project Gutenberg already provides free access to “more than 13.000 eBooks” according to their own count.
http://www.gutenberg.org/
And they have an experimental feature to search full text too.
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/search
What does google propose to do better? Nothing I can find.
Allegations that google is only interested in the publicity and the potential for profits upon use might not be entirely baseless.
December 17th, 2004 at 3:17 pm
this library project is a fabulous idea. it will give access to billions of people with the desire to learn and discover the cultures of the world, average people without special access to the university communities or libraries. i believe the scholars of history intended for their work to be appreciated by the world, for it’s value to humanity. finally, that will happen.
December 18th, 2004 at 9:07 am
Someone on the copy editor listserv also pointed out that there are hundreds of libraries just in North American that have books that can realistically never be scanned-’n-searchable; artist notebooks with illos and boustrephon writing, for example.