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Xtremehkr

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 4, 2004
1,897
0
Link

Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, announced today that it had entered into agreements with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web.

It may be only a step on a long road toward the long-predicted global virtual library. But the collaboration of Google and research institutions that also include Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library is a major stride in an ambitious Internet effort by various parties. The goal is to expand the Web beyond its current valuable, if eclectic, body of material and create a digital card catalog and searchable library for the world's books, scholarly papers and special collections.

Google - newly wealthy from its stock offering last summer - has agreed to underwrite the projects while also adding its own technical abilities to the task of scanning and digitizing tens of thousands of pages a day at each library.

"Even before we started Google, we dreamed of making the incredible breadth of information that librarians so lovingly organize searchable online," said Larry Page, one of Google's founders.

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information, and we're excited to be working with libraries to help make this mission a reality," Mr. Page said.

The company's new project will be an expansion of the Google Print™ program, which works with publishers to make books and publications searchable online. Google is currently working with libraries to digitally scan books from their collections to make them available to internet users everywhere.

"We believe passionately that such universal access to the world's printed treasures is mission-critical for today's great public university," said Mary Sue Coleman, president of the University of Michigan.

Although Google executives declined to comment on its technology or the cost of the undertaking, others involved estimate the figure at $10 for each of the more than 15 million books and other documents covered in the agreements. Librarians involved predict the project could take at least a decade.

Because the Google agreements are not exclusive, the pacts are almost certain to touch off a race with other major Internet search providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo. Like Google, they might seek the right to offer online access to library materials in return for selling advertising, while libraries would receive corporate help in digitizing their collections for their own institutional uses.

"Within two decades, most of the world's knowledge will be digitized and available, one hopes for free reading on the Internet, just as there is free reading in libraries today," said Michael A. Keller, Stanford University's head librarian.

The Google effort and others like it that are already under way, including projects by the Library of Congress to put selections of its best holdings online, are part of a trend to potentially democratize access to information that has long been available to only small, select groups of students and scholars.

On Monday night the Library of Congress and a group of international libraries from the United States, Canada, Egypt, China and the Netherlands announced a plan to create a publicly available digital archive of one million books on the Internet. The group said it planned to have 70,000 volumes online by next April.

"Having the great libraries at your fingertips allows us to build on and create great works based on the work of others," said Brewster Kahle, founder and president of the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based digital library that is also trying to digitize existing print information.

The agreements announced today will allow Google to publish the full text of only those library books old enough to no longer be under copyright. For copyrighted works, Google would scan in the entire text, but make only short excerpts available online.

Each agreement with a library is slightly different. Google plans to digitize nearly all the eight million books in Stanford's collection and the seven million at Michigan. The Harvard project will initially be limited to only about 40,000 volumes. The scanning at Bodleian Library at Oxford will be limited to an unspecified number of books published before 1900, while the New York Public Library project will involve fragile material not under copyright that library officials said would be of interest primarily to scholars.

The trend toward online libraries and virtual card catalogs is one that already has book publishers scrambling to respond.

This is a handy feature, but nothing beats the experience of going to a library, or reading a book.
 

dotnina

macrumors 6502a
Aug 19, 2004
856
0
I'm really impressed how Google is getting involved in academia with the new Google Scholar and now this. While nothing beats the library, it'll be great to have digital, searchable information freely available to all.
 

Inspector Lee

macrumors 6502a
Jan 24, 2004
590
0
East Lansing, MI
Xtremehkr said:
This is a handy feature, but nothing beats the experience of going to a library, or reading a book.

I agree. There is nothing like wandering the stacks of a large public library. Was perusing "Patience and Fortitude" last night by Nicholas Basbanes and the subject of virtual libraries was addressed and addressed heatedly.

In the US, anything written pre-1923 is public domain. There was a major court case (Eldred v. Ashcroft) which went down a few years ago because the copyright to Mickey Mouse (among other things) was going to expire.

Here is a Q & A on Michigan's website which provides a little more detail.
 

mactastic

macrumors 68040
Apr 24, 2003
3,681
665
Colly-fornia
The only concern I have is that Google has apparently decided these book search results will show up on the main page as part of the already massive search results. I guess I'd like to see a catagory like 'News' only for 'Library' results.

Otherwise I love it. It's gonna be great to have access to all that stuff through Google.
 

Apple Hobo

macrumors 6502a
Mar 19, 2004
796
0
A series of tubes
Xtremehkr said:
This is a handy feature, but nothing beats the experience of going to a library, or reading a book.

I also agree. I think it would be great to be able to read any book from the comfort of my home, but I hate reading lengthy material on a computer. There are so many practical reasons why a tangible book is better than an electronic one.

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but has anyone noticed that more recent software comes with a PDF manual instead of a printed manual? I am so much more likely to RTFM if it's printed. :D It's very annoying when I'm trying to learn about the features of a new, complex application and I have to flip back and forth between the app and its PDF manual on the same screen. It's much easier to hold a printed manual in my hands and compare its contents with the application on my screen.
 

dobbin

macrumors 6502a
Jan 28, 2002
587
5
England
Yup I'd rather have a paper manual than a .pdf.

I still a paper copies of Microsoft Office manuals (for PC Office 97!) and I prefer to look in that to learn something like how to write a formula in Excel (OS X version) than look up the online help thing. Wierd I know, but I like looking it up in a book!

Back on topic - I think the Google library thing is an awesome project especially if they can digitise books that normal people can never get access too, such as some of the old manuscripts in the Bodlean in Oxford. I remember seeing a very early copy of Newtons Principia Mathematica once and its amazing to look at that and think of the history, but most people don't ever get to handle books like that.
 
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