Google’s Book Search – A watch on what happened and whats happening
One of the most controversial project of Google is GBS or Google Book Search. Launched in early 2004, this project is still in its beta version. If we think Google was the first one to innovate the idea of digitalizing books for public domain, then we are worng. The first such project started in early 1970’s called Gutenberg project. Though the digitilization was in ASCII format, it still solved the purpose. The next big one was The Million Books Project .
There are several, relatively small but worthy eBook collections that are free to search and display the full text of books, such as the small scholarly book collection of the National Academies Press or the free subset of ebrary with about 30,000 books. For further information, see Nicholas Tomaiuolo’s well-updated and annotated list of e-text collections and the Open Directory Project section on the topic as implemented by Google.
Then came into picture Amazons Look inside the book and Search inside the book projects, which were/are one of the most successful products ever to enter the web market.
Coming back to GBS, also called called Google Print Beta, lets Web surfers call up brief excerpts from books, critic reviews, bibliographic and author’s notes and, in some cases, a picture of the book jacket. The business model is simple, Publishers will provide the whole book for digitilization and search will provide excerpts from the book. The page will also have links from where the surfers can get the book. Now talkign about the patent rights, there is no particular framework here when google is going to digitalize the whole book. Though the surfers will be able tosee only excerpts from the book, once their need is done, it is possible that 90% of then are never gonna buy the book.
Librarians and library users alike are starting to use Google Book Search (formerly Google Print) the way they use Google—and are now mining information from books. But does Google Book Search let its users easily find a library version of a book? Not unless the book is out of copyright, and Google doesn’t yet explain that. The third question in the Google Book Search FAQ reads as follows: "What is the ‘Find it in a Library’ link?" The answer: "When you click on ‘Find it in a Library’ we send you to the OCLC Worldcat where you can enter your zip code and find a local library that has the book." The reality is more complicated and less impressive. The "Find it in a Library" link only appears on books that Google has scanned from libraries, in the Library Project, not the much larger (as of now) collection of current books submitted for scanning by publishers.
In August this year, Google also provided the feature of downloading books in PDF format, for the books outta copyright. Many programs are being built around the GBS project, like Publisher Program, Library Program etc.
Well all good, but is the project was worth investing the time. Many legal and ethical issues around, the orginal version is still to see the day of lght. The beta version had been out for 2 years now, the indexing of books havent yet reached its potential. Being a Data driven project, the indexing aspect is the most important. Though we dont have much details on the indexing part which started with some 37 million pages being indexed. Currently, Google is ina contract spree with everyother Publisher, institutions, Universities etc to bring their dream project in place. With all legal barriers in place only time can say the realization of the dream.
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