Move over Google Books...

[Yoc]

Here's an interesting topic that's worth a read.

http://news.yahoo.com/internet-archivist-seeks-1-every-book-written-183621648.html

Thanks to loftypilot for pointing it out.
-Yoc

[John C]

I applaud the insane goal of the project and will probably try to help out.  And certainly love my books for the reasons he suggests, but I disagree with the thesis that "there's always a role for books."  It's like saying that there's always a role for album art (while people buy MP3s) or floppy disks.

They can be a kind of art that's impossible with more modern media, and the medium may have forced certain artistic decisions, but that's not necessarily a relevant role, and it ignores the fact that the majority of books are merely carriers for the content.  Like, I own a mass-market paperback of "The Tempest."  I doubt that anybody is more attached to that artifact than they are to the file (with pretty much the same text) hosted by Project Gutenberg.

But as I said, it's a great project.  If nothing else, it'll be a good source to scan from as copyrights expire and an interesting kind of museum.

[John C]

I should also mention this, now that I've watched it:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/brewster_kahle_builds_a_free_digital_library.html

It's Kahle talking about the Internet Archive's projects, to give a sense of the scope involved.  Most interesting is something that has been kicked around here, I believe:  Don't farm out your scanning to people who don't care about the content, even if it sounds cheaper.