Google and digitized books

This is of course what should happen:

“The most ambitious solution would transform Google’s digital database into a truly public library. That, of course, would require an act of Congress, one that would make a decisive break with the American habit of determining public issues by private lawsuit.”

See Robert Darnton’s article in the NYRB: Google and the New Digital Future

I’m afraid it won’t happen. Never.

Think about his too, having it done in another way:

“… with none of the missing pages, botched images, faulty editions, omitted artwork, censoring, and misconceived cataloging that mar Google’s enterprise. Bibliographers—who appear to play little or no part in Google’s enterprise—would direct operations along with computer engineers. Librarians would cooperate with both in order to assure the preservation of the books, another weak point in GBS, because Google is not committed to maintaining its corpus, and digitized texts easily degrade or become inaccessible.”

en,reading matter,ubiscribe | December 15, 2009 | 23:50 | Comments Off on Google and digitized books |

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