an AP article on Google’s plan to make millions of books searchable on the Internet and the reactions from different publishers. Google will restrict the number of pages that readers can see if the book is not in the public domain and publishers retain the right to keep a book from being scanned.
“For a typical author, obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy,” said Tim O’Reilly, chief executive of O’Reilly Media and an adviser to Google’s project. “Google is offering publishers an amazing opportunity for people to discover their content.”
James Hilton, associate provost and interim librarian at the University of Michigan, said his school is contributing 7 million volumes over six years because one day, materials that aren’t searchable online simply won’t get read.
“That doesn’t mean it’s going to be read online, but it’s not going to be found if it’s not online,” he said.
Comments
@ 05:20
I found this quote pretty interesting:
Richard Hull, executive director of the Text and Academic Authors Association, called Google’s approach backwards. Publishers shouldn’t have to bear the burden of record-keeping, agreed Sanfilippo, the Penn State press’s marketing and sales director.
“We’re not aware of everything we’ve published,” Sanfilippo said. “Back in the 50s, 60s and 70s, there were no electronic files for those books.”
I can’t say I’ve heard a harsher inadvertent indictment of not requiring copyright renewals. This publisher seems to be advocating that its better for these books to rot due to the publishing system not valuing them rather than make them available in any way.
@ 14:44
I think there is a great secondary opportunity in realizing the connectedness of meaning in pieces of all these texts.