Prosperity
May-18th-2006, 07:05 AM
I figured this would the only logical step after the Google book service, (which is really useful for finding the right books for research papers). I hope they can get a massive database in the next few years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051702016.html
Google's Goal: A Worldwide Web of Books
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page D01
It's odd to hear Vinton Cerf, regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Internet, to gush over ink-on-paper books.
The electronic pioneer and computer scientist, who now works as Google's chief Internet evangelist, is also a bibliophile who has a collection of about 10,000 hard-copy volumes lining shelves at his home in McLean.
These days, Cerf is busy promoting Google's plan to marry his two passions -- books and the Internet -- by digitizing millions of library books. He recently dropped by my office to explain the controversial plan and talk about its implications for book lovers.
As Cerf talked about his personal book collection and the limitations of having knowledge fixed on paper, he got me thinking about how reading will be transformed when static libraries join the more dynamic world of cross-referenced knowledge on the Web.
For starters, Cerf said, libraries are not exactly easy to navigate.
"Think for a moment about the dead-tree problem," he said. "When you stand in your own personal library looking for something and you realize that A, you can't remember which book it was in, and B, there's no way you can go through manually looking at all the pages, then you think, 'God, I wish all this stuff was online.' "
That's the stated goal of Google's library project, to create a massive electronic card catalog that will help people find information in published books, much as Google already does with Web pages...
Rest at link
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051702016.html
Google's Goal: A Worldwide Web of Books
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page D01
It's odd to hear Vinton Cerf, regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Internet, to gush over ink-on-paper books.
The electronic pioneer and computer scientist, who now works as Google's chief Internet evangelist, is also a bibliophile who has a collection of about 10,000 hard-copy volumes lining shelves at his home in McLean.
These days, Cerf is busy promoting Google's plan to marry his two passions -- books and the Internet -- by digitizing millions of library books. He recently dropped by my office to explain the controversial plan and talk about its implications for book lovers.
As Cerf talked about his personal book collection and the limitations of having knowledge fixed on paper, he got me thinking about how reading will be transformed when static libraries join the more dynamic world of cross-referenced knowledge on the Web.
For starters, Cerf said, libraries are not exactly easy to navigate.
"Think for a moment about the dead-tree problem," he said. "When you stand in your own personal library looking for something and you realize that A, you can't remember which book it was in, and B, there's no way you can go through manually looking at all the pages, then you think, 'God, I wish all this stuff was online.' "
That's the stated goal of Google's library project, to create a massive electronic card catalog that will help people find information in published books, much as Google already does with Web pages...
Rest at link