Google to scan library books
2004-12-14 18:20
San Francisco - Stacks of hard-to-find books are being scanned into Google Inc's widely used internet search engine in its attempt to establish a massive online reading room for five major libraries.
Material from the New York public library as well as libraries at four universities - Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and Oxford - will be indexed on Google under the ambitious initiative announced late on Monday.
The Michigan and Stanford libraries are the only two so far to agree to submit all their material to Google's scanners.
The New York library is allowing Google to include a small portion of its books no longer covered by copyright while Harvard is confining its participation to 40 000 volumes so it can gauge how well the process works.
Oxford wants Google to scan all its books originally published before 1901.
Scanning books so they can be read through computers isn't new.
Both Google and Amazon.com already have programs that offer online glimpses of new books while an assortment of other sites for several years have provide digital access to some material in libraries scattered around the country.
But Google's latest commitment could have the biggest impact yet, given the breadth of material that the company hopes to put into its search engine, which has become renowned for its processing speed, ease of use and accuracy.
The project gives Google's search engine another potential drawing card as it faces stiffening competition for Yahoo and Microsoft Corp's MSN.
Attracting visitor traffic is crucial to Google's financial health because the company depends on revenue generated by people clicking on advertising links posted next to the main body of search results.
Scanning the library books figures to be a daunting task, even for a cutting edge company such as Google, whose online index of 8 billion web pages already has revolutionised the way people look for information.
Michigan's library alone contains 7 million of its library volumes - more than 200km of books. Google hopes to get the job done at Michigan within six years, Wilkin said.
Harvard's library is even larger with 15 million volumes.
As it does with new books already included in its search engine, Google will only allow its users to view the bibliographies or other snippets of copyrighted books scanned from the libraries.
The search engine will provide unrestricted access to all material in the public domain - work no longer covered by copyrights.
- AP