The Google bookscanning project hasn’t been in the news much lately (there are still lawsuits going on), but the scanning of millions of books
continues.
Google, the Internet’s leader in search and advertising, says the process it developed and is using for scanning the majority of the books in Book Search is proprietary. Employees will not discuss it except to say it is much faster than what Mitchel is doing and it’s not destructive.
“It took us quite a while to develop it so we do keep that confidential,” said a library manager for Book Search, Ben Bunnell, who declined even to say where Google does the scanning.
Many libraries began digitizing books a decade ago to preserve them. Funding from Google allows the 28 libraries it’s working with to cut their digitizing costs because they don’t have to pay for scanning the books Google wants to include in Book Search.
Thcoarse Book Search,users can track down a book on any topic they’re interested in and read a small portion. If the book’s not protected by copyright, users can download the entire thing. If it is, or if they just want to read an original, they can use Book Search to find copies to purchase or borrow.
More than 1 million scarce or fragile books have been digitized thcoarse the Google-Michigan partnership since it began in 2004, with an estimated 6 million to go.
The work of scanning in each page of all the scarce books in libraries is an unbelievably tedious one. We amazement what they pay their book scanners? Minimum wage? Or more, because you have to be qualified to handle scarce books?
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Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog
