FLASH something else in

[griess]

FLASH something else in good ol' San Francisco

[teresa]

Every f-ing book is being digitalized Google began it

[mira]

Is that bad? Under the recent court case, authors can opt out, and even if they could digitize every book published since Gutenberg, that would take a long, long time. And if they digitized every book, books would still exist in print for those of us who prefer to read in print. No?

[niven]

Google has digitized seven million books. Google is on its way to having a monopoly of all public knowledge. Yes, there will still be printed books as we know them, but increasingly people need computer access to works. Some universities balked at Google's restrictions for the digitization of there collections. Subscribing to a corporation's collection may be one way to access a book. A fear is that Google will have sole discretion over what people read as well as be able to make money from what until this time has been apart of the public domain. The Internet Archives is a non-profit and it includes an engine that will allow you research websites that don't exist anymore!

[Zorana]

OK, but those are two different things! web content vs. printed matter. A large issue in the google book suit was that they were digitizing books *not* in the public domain: i.e., books still in copyright. Those are the books authors/publishers can opt out. Arguably, U.S. copyright law as extended by the Sony Bono act does more to restrict access to info than Google can.

[pike]

just passing along info i.e., Internet Archives and their web page search engine. They also archive text, audio, and video. Right now libraries are still exciting places to go. I spent much time sitting on the floor of my alma mater devouring books related to my subject or not. I love learning. I don't want to see advertising when I am doing a book search nor do I Google to determine what people should be able to read and not read, should it get that far in their monopoly. Look at the small business. Increasingly the places we shop are corporate-owned-identical, employing people for short periods of time, and in my opinion selling inferior products. Is the way of the library? I think so. If you want the book you pay a corporation for a subscription like for a journal. I think one can argue pro and con about computers forever. Things will change. If there's money to be made, somebody's already on it. Again, Internet Archives charges no money and does have the interest of the public in mind in its quest to preserve, maintain, and guard the world's literature.

[calaway]

Right, I understand & agree and am a huge fan of books read anywhere someone cares to read them. But doesn't digitizing books make that content available to *more* people? Especially rare or unusual books that someone would otherwise have to travel to view a copy of. Google Books has saved me trips to libraries (and the time that an inter-library loan would take) many times. The Internet Archive is more interested in preserving digital content that may not exist in print, which is an excellent goal but a different one. Google's into a lot of things, and while I don't automatiy love that they're a mondo for-profit corporation, they also don't charge users money, and they do make it possible to find many things that aren't findable through the Internet Archive (for example). Google's one tool -- and it's thank god not the only tool there is.

[determan]

google beat internet archives to it. libraries don't want their books scanned for a second time. the argument you're making is the one we all are hoping is the correct line of vision. some university libraries don't like the fact that you must be on campus in order to view some of the books, and they opted out. taxes pay for our libraries and we didn't vote to have google get copies of everything so they can sell them at a profit. our usage will no longer be so anonymous either. google's got the bucks right now to pull this whole thing off. i think it's an interesting question never-the-less of technology pulling the cart. there are pluses and minuses to everything, and while it sounds good now, i don't want to find out in ten years that i am not able to read the information i need. what will google do with this control it has over information over the long run?

[littmann]

But it doesn't control the books that are still in book form! Have you watched ... Googlezon?

[john]

Scary! I liked the narrator. He sounds like a story teller from the Pacifica network i.e., Joe Frank. Thanks!

[akerman]

actually, the best place to go and get world literature online (and for free) is Project Gutenberg. I love that I can get stuff on there that I haven't seen since I was a wee little thing and the library still had an old beat up copy, that they've since taken out of their collection. I like google for the abstracts they sometimes provide, that can tell me if a book is what I'm looking for, when amazon.com/library descriptions fail. In the digital age, with so many research tools to choose from, it's best to utilize the majority of them, and not worry about the one or two out there that are questionable. Because, to be honest, google's search function blows for research. Most of the time I need a search engine that recognizes Boolean searches.