Google to Scan Books From Big Libraries

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Taking a trip to the library may take little more than a computer's Web browser. Working with major libraries, Google is hoping to scan millions of books and periodicals into its popular Internet search engine during the next several years as part of an effort to bring more of the world's collective knowledge online.

Material from the New York public library as well as libraries at four universities - Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and Oxford - will be indexed on Mountain View, Calif.-based Google under the ambitious initiative announced late Monday.

The Michigan and Stanford libraries are the only two so far to agree to submit all their material to Google's scanners.

The New York library is allowing Google to include a small portion of its books no longer covered by copyright while Harvard is confining its participation to 40,000 volumes so it can gauge how well the process works. Oxford wants Google Inc. (GOOG) to scan all its books originally published before 1901.

Google eventually hopes other major libraries will participate in the project.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20041214/D86VHULO5.html

I think that this is so exciting. Imagine being able to access material from great libraries right from your computer. Copyrighted material will only display snippets of the entire text. Material from the public domain will be available in its entirety.

My mind is really racing. I could imagine that eventually there could be a service, where, for a fee, you could download copyrighted stuff, much like what is done with music now. What do you think? Would you find something like this useful?

Quote:

The books scanned from libraries will be included in the same Google index the spans the Web. By throwing everything into the same pot, Google risks burying the library book results far below the Web documents containing the same search terms term, reducing the usefulness of the feature, said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch, an industry newsletter.

I am wondering if one way of dealing with this problem would be to relegate the stuff from the libraries in "Google Scholar"?

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That would be ideal...otherwise they WOULD be buried.
Very exciting news!

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Fantastic - I've just been watching the story on the news

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There are other book digitisation projects as well underway:

- "The Million Books Project will be posting 10's of thousands of books later this month on the Archive and elsewhere. These were scanned in India by the Indian government." Source

- "This fall we kicked off a volume book scanning "in-library" project at the University of Toronto." Source

Movie of the Internet Archive's Scanning Robot at the University of Toronto, link here

(In Germany, they have started the digitisation of a couple of the most prominent libraries some month ago as well.)

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The most important thing is to get the Library Of Congress digitized.

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panzade wrote:

The most important thing is to get the Library Of Congress digitized.

29 million books and other printed materials, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 57 million manuscripts - should be done in the twinkling of an eye :wink:

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Rolling up my sleeves Mr Know-It-All

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When I read stuff like that, I really regret that I am not younger. I think that there is going to be an explosion of information at our fingertips, like the world has never known!

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That's right, Phoenix. But

a) this hasn't to do anything with age
b) let's hope, most sites will remain free!

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Not really a "Million Book Project" but:

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"By working with libraries from 5 countries, and working to expand this number, we are bringing a broad range of materials to every interested individual. This growing commitment to open access through public archives marks a significant commitment to broad, public, and free access. While still early in its evolution, works in dozens of languages are already stored in the Internet Archive's Open-Access Text Archive offering a breadth of materials to everyone. Over one million books have been committed to the Text Archive. Currently over twenty-seven thousand are available and an additional fifty thousand are expected in the first quarter of 2005. Advanced processing of these multilingual books will offer unprecedented access."

Source

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panzade wrote:

The most important thing is to get the Library Of Congress digitized.

Quote:

Tuesday December 21

Internet Archive to build alternative to GoogleBy Mark Chillingworth

Ten major international libraries have agreed to combine their digitised book collections into a free text-based archive hosted online by the not-for-profit Internet Archive. All content digitised and held in the text archive will be freely available to online users.

Two major US libraries have agreed to join the scheme: Carnegie Mellon University library and The Library of Congress have committed their Million Book Project and American Memory Projects, respectively, to the text archive. The projects both provide access to digitised collections.

The Canadian universities of Toronto, Ottawa and McMaster have agreed to add their collections, as have China's Zhejiang University, the Indian Institute of Science, the European Archives and Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.

In a statement, the Internet Archive describes the Text Archive as an Open Access archive that will "ensure permanent and public access to our published heritage". Over a million books have been committed to the Text Archive by the member institutes, with 50,000 available in the first quarter of 2005.

The San Francisco-based Internet Archive was founded in 1996 to build a library for the internet that offered access to historical collections. It's most well-known online project is the Wayback Machine, which harvests snapshots of freely-available websites.

Announced 24 hours after Google's tie-up with the university libraries of Oxford, Stanford, Michigan and Harvard, and the New York Public Library, the Internet Archive project is likely to be seen as the first of many alternatives to the Google Print library.

Internet Archive said: "Commercial companies are currently working with libraries to digitise materials as well. We are encouraging these efforts and hope most of these materials will also be available through Text Archives."

Source

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:wink:

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<Hell, how did he know that I only posted that for him>

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Walter--

Thanks from me, too.

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This is awesome news... I love reading so much that I read about 5 hours a day... I finish couple books a week.. Having this at my finger tips, made my job much more easier... HEHE.... LOve the net...

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Google to Scan Books From Big Libraries

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