It was bound to happen.Word from the London Book Fair is that Google is going into the book business. By year's end they will launch two book related initiatives that will further alter the book landscape.What's in store:A book rental program that will let you rent the content of a book on a weekly basis.andA book retail program that will allow users lifetime access to the texts they purchase.They are not attaching the cursed e-book tag to either project.Michael Cairnes, who was at the Google sessions at the London Book Fair, has the scoop in his blog post titled "Google...
Side By Side. Finally
For the first time, after who knows how many thousands of years, the sacred texts of the world's three monastic faiths, Judiasm, Christianilty and Islam have been gathered together for an exhibition at the British Library.The exhibit Sacred: Discover What We Share: The World's Greatest Collection of Jewish, Christian and Muslim Holy Books brings together the rarest sacred texts in existence.Highlights include:A tattered copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls andA"Qur'an commissioned for a 14th-century Mongol ruler of modern Iran who was born a shaman, baptised a Christian, and converted first to Buddhism, then Sunni and finally Shia Islam."There is a...
The First Cracks in Google’s Attempt to Digitize the World
Peter Brantley is the director of strategic technology for academic information systems at the University of California, one of the premier libraries that have entered into a relationship with Google to digitize their holdings.Here is some of what he had to say about the initiative:-it was mistake-The goal is undeniably grand, and good.The means have left much to be desired.-We poisoned our hand before we played it-For the love of selfish confidence, we spoke neither our fortune nor our misgivings with our neighbors or our friends-In our selfishness, and wrapped in the fears we were given, we re-wrote and redefined...
The "No Information Left Behind" Act
With the debate over the digitization of our cultural heritage in full swing it's time to propose the "No Information Left Behind" Act.With lack of funding being the biggest hurdle many institutions face we need to get creative in coming up with ways to fund these endeavors. Our government must get more involved. We simply cannot leave it to the private sector. There are too many variables and potential pitfalls with having the digital rights of so many cultural artifacts in the hands of private companies. They may mean well now but things can change in a hurry in the...
da Vinci’s Notebooks Digitized: For Some Eyes Only
For the first time in 500 years the text of both of Leonardo's notebooks are available to be viewed side by side. This "electronic reunification" as the Chief Executive of the British Library Lynne Brindley put it of the Codex Leicester, purchased in 1994 for $30.8 million by Bill Gates, and the Codex Arundel which is housed in the British Library, is a product of the British Library program Turning the Pages 2.0.When viewing the Notebooks with Turning the Pages 2 "people can rotate and move the notebooks on the screen, and turn on a magnifying glass to see the...