I can't wait to see how they plan to implement this. I already use the internet as my primary research tool, but to imagine large portions of public libraries online thanks to a collusion between Google and Oxford University, Harvard, the University of Michigan and the New York Public Library... It's like a dream come true.

Well... for geeks like me, anyway...

Google Turns a New Page in Library Project

Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, announced an agreement yesterday with Oxford University and some of the leading U.S. research libraries to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web.

It may be only a step on a long road toward the long-predicted global virtual library. But the collaboration of Google and research institutions that also include Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library is a major stride in an ambitious Internet effort by various parties.

The goal is to expand the Web beyond its current valuable, if eclectic, body of material and create a digital card catalog and searchable library for the world's books, scholarly papers and special collections.

Democracy and Information

Google, newly wealthy from its stock offering last summer, has agreed to underwrite the projects announced yesterday while also adding its own technical capabilities to the task of scanning and digitizing tens of thousands a pages a day at each library.

Although Google executives declined to comment on its technology or the cost of the undertaking, others involved estimate the figure at US$10 for each of the more than 15 million books and other documents covered in the agreements. Librarians involved predict that the project could take at least a decade.

Because the Google agreements are not exclusive, the agreements are almost certain to touch off a race with other major Internet search providers like Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) Latest News about Amazon.com, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft and Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) Latest News about Yahoo. Like Google, they may seek the right to offer online access to library materials in return for selling advertising, while libraries would receive corporate help in digitizing their collections for their own institutional uses.

"Within two decades, most of the world's knowledge will be digitized and available, one hopes, for free reading on the Internet, just as there is free reading in libraries today," said Michael Keller, Stanford's head librarian.

The Google effort and others like it that are already under way, including projects by the Library of Congress to put selections of its best holdings online, are part of a trend that would potentially democratize access to information that has long been available to only a small and elite group of students and scholars.

On Monday night, the Library of Congress and a group of international libraries from the United States, Canada, Egypt, China and the Netherlands announced a new plan to create a publicly available digital archive of 1 million books on the Internet. The group said it planned to have 70,000 volumes online by next April.

Read the entire article for even more info...

Posted by Michael at December 15, 2004 04:43 PM