DOWNLOADING STARTS AT GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH
Google's controversial Book Search program is set to begin offering downloads of entire out-of-copyright texts. Until now, books in the program were available online only. With the option to download texts, users can now easily search those texts, print copies of them, or keep local copies on their computers to read offline. Books still under copyright protection are not available for download. Instead, small sections of text are online for users to view, unless the copyright owner grants Google permission to show more text. Many publishers and others have objected to Google's model, saying that even scanning copyrighted books and displaying snippets of them violates their copyright. Sidney Verba, director of the Harvard University Library, one of the libraries participating in the program, said that the ability to search texts allows users to "find previously buried information about historical events or people, places of interest, and matters cultural or scientific." Wall Street Journal, 30 August 2006 (sub. req'd) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115694354228349458.html Can anyone get me the whole article? Thanks! michael
I've downloaded a bunch of them, and the clearance requests will be coming in soon... But, The quality of the scanning work is often not very good, I've encountered the following already in a small sample of 25 texts - Missing pages - Double scanned pages - Blurred pages - Moving or bend pages - Hands covering parts of the text - Pages where part of the text is cut of. - Non-functional PDF files (all pages white) I would say, more files have missing pages than are complete. Conclusion: Quality control leaves something to be desired. This means, - Carefully check after downloading - Send out requests to volunteers to get missing pages. - Start the long process of turning it into a real ebook. I've downloaded several books that I have on the shelve ready for scanning, and here it saves a lot of work. Furthermore - Many interesting books are still snippets only, even if clearly out of copyright - Many of the oldest books are still without a PDF. Still a great resource, with lots of books I couldn't get even via ILL. Jeroen. Michael Hart wrote:
Google's controversial Book Search program is set to begin offering downloads of entire out-of-copyright texts. [...]
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participants (2)
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Jeroen Hellingman (Mailing List Account) -
Michael Hart