Courtney Mitchel, of the University of Michigan library’s book-shelving department is among hundreds of librarians who spend hours of each day going through almost 600 pages of some of the world’s oldest books. Their work is part of Google’s Book Search, a project that plans to offer its users access to digital versions of 50 million to 100 million ancient texts. “It’s monotonous,” 24-year-old Mitchel said. Among the books being scanned by librarians is one which they believe to be the oldest Bible in the world printed in Arabic. Book Search allows users to search books through a variety of topics. They are allowed to download the entire text as long as the book is not held under copyright. If it is, or if they just want to read an original, they can use Book Search to find copies to buy or borrow.
More than 1 million rare or fragile books have been digitized through the Google-Michigan partnership since it began in 2004, with an estimated 6 million to go. Although many publishers, authors and librarians have supported Google’s efforts, some have sued the Internet search leader, claiming that Book Search violates their copyrights. Google insists that it is upholding any copyright by only allowing users to read portions of protected books.
Source: AP
wow… good idea!
full NEW books would be kewl
@1 i second that
must be pretty useful
People can copyright ‘ancient’ texts now and restrict access to them? Awesome.
lol, oldest Bible in Arabic, classic…
Given the history of that text, probably the only people who didn’t burn it or alter it, for their own no good deeds…
Google FTW !
Who is copyrighting ancient texts and restricting excess?
*access… my spell checker is dumb.
check out books.google.com instead of posting silly things here, you might learn something
their “previews” are 800 page books where they skip 2-3 redundant pages and claim they’re not infringing on copyright and just showing it for preview purposes.
i love google, my heroes ^^
The rich are not alone. Terrific idea.
slep
Great idea
I’m wondering how any texts will be adjusted in content by google. =\
Wonder if they’ll do Homer’s Lliad, or Ceaser’s, Plato’s and Aristotle’s writings.
http://books.google.com/
That is awesome. I used to read something like a book a day when I was like 10-15, this would have been my heaven. Well, and the torrents of book collections one can find in pirate bay and the like.
..last read a book maybe 15 years ago.
/too old, too lazy now
All your text are belong to us…
Don’t be evil? Too late.
Way, way, way too late.
But then the moment they felt they had to even say it, it was too late.
Now we just need a warez-version! Imagine the scene releasing books.
No but seriously, that _would_ be awesome. It’s hard for me to find english books in Sweden, and even harder to find them for download.
it all seems like a scheme for selling books.
most books on there are just as a preview - with links to amazon and such….
just like when you buy music on the net they let you listen to 30 seconds of a track….
still one can find some gems in there im sure.