Google Books
Title: Is Google Books a Good Thing?
The Google Books project has been a working progress ever since Google was created. The co-founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page had been working on a research project that was supported by the Stanford digital Library Technologies Project in 1996. Google intends to scan every book ever published and make all of the text searchable so that people can find the relevant information they need about book. They want to make books more accessible to the public and create an easy mechanism of sorting a book’s content and relevance to a subject. In 2002 a secret “books” project was launched and research was underway to identify the challenges that lay ahead of them. Over this period, Googlers discovered a quick and harm free way to scan books and began to meet with Libraries to begin the digitalization of books. In December 2004 Google announces the launch of the “Google Print” Library Project thanks to partnerships from Harvard, The University of Michigan, The New York Public Library, Oxford and Stanford. Together it is said that these libraries exceed 15million volumes. In 2005 Google Print is renamed Google Books which is a more fitting title as it better explains it’s use.
With the launch of Google Books and its fast development many will argue of the advantages and disadvantages of the site. The whole project seems a little bit overly ambitious and it obviously has many flaws in its system. It is a timely process to scan hundreds of millions of books and the pivotal question here is “Are Google books doing it right?” Scanning books is an extremely time consuming process so once Google books have done it, it seems unlikely that the books will be rescanned. If some of the books are not scanned properly, important literature and information could become obscured or lost through the process of digitalization.
Geoff Nunberg (2009) published an article Google books: A Metadata Train Wreck and pointed out
The Google Books project has been a working progress ever since Google was created. The co-founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page had been working on a research project that was supported by the Stanford digital Library Technologies Project in 1996. Google intends to scan every book ever published and make all of the text searchable so that people can find the relevant information they need about book. They want to make books more accessible to the public and create an easy mechanism of sorting a book’s content and relevance to a subject. In 2002 a secret “books” project was launched and research was underway to identify the challenges that lay ahead of them. Over this period, Googlers discovered a quick and harm free way to scan books and began to meet with Libraries to begin the digitalization of books. In December 2004 Google announces the launch of the “Google Print” Library Project thanks to partnerships from Harvard, The University of Michigan, The New York Public Library, Oxford and Stanford. Together it is said that these libraries exceed 15million volumes. In 2005 Google Print is renamed Google Books which is a more fitting title as it better explains it’s use.
With the launch of Google Books and its fast development many will argue of the advantages and disadvantages of the site. The whole project seems a little bit overly ambitious and it obviously has many flaws in its system. It is a timely process to scan hundreds of millions of books and the pivotal question here is “Are Google books doing it right?” Scanning books is an extremely time consuming process so once Google books have done it, it seems unlikely that the books will be rescanned. If some of the books are not scanned properly, important literature and information could become obscured or lost through the process of digitalization.
Geoff Nunberg (2009) published an article Google books: A Metadata Train Wreck and pointed out
Bibliography: • Duguid, Paul. "Inheritance and Loss? A Brief Survey on Google Books." N.p., Aug. 2007. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. . • Nunberg, Geoff. "Language Log." » Google Books: A Metadata Train Wreck. N.p., 29 Aug. 2009. Web. 11 Nov. 2012. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1701 • McSherry, Corynne. "Good and Bad in Google Book Search Settlement Decision | Electronic Frontier Foundation." Good and Bad in Google Book Search Settlement Decision | Electronic Frontier Foundation. N.p., 23 Mar. 2011. Web. 11 Nov. 2012. . • Rogers, T. "Google Books: Good for Knowledge, Bad for Privacy." Information Privacy Law. N.p., 28 Mar. 2011. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. http://www.brianrowe.org/infoprivacylaw/2011/03/28/google-books-good-for-knowledge-bad-for-privacy/ • "Google Books." Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2012. . .