Google Digital Book Library
Posted by: David Bunch
Google's back scanning of millions of copyrighted books for the purposes of getting them digitized and online is causing concern for the American Association of Publishers.
Aaron Lansky rescued millions of Yiddish books that would have been lost forever. Now he has undertaken a massive project, sponsored by Spielberg, to digitally scan and reprint on demand these books for public enjoyment.
But imagine the benefits. For the consumer, there is access to old volumes that have long since been out of print or are hard to come buy. For the publisher, only books that have been purchased need be printed-from the electronic file. It is like just in time inventory.
There is also LuLu, where you can publish and print your own work on demand.
The future is now, and this is where book publishing is going-rapidly. We know from experience that if Google is on it, then it's going to be huge.
Google's back scanning of millions of copyrighted books for the purposes of getting them digitized and online is causing concern for the American Association of Publishers.
Last year, the AAP sued Google on behalf of five of its members -- The McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson Education, Penguin Group USA, Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons -- alleging massive copyright infringement in the Google Books Library Project.The article gives a lot of details regarding Google's contract with the University of California, but my point in bringing up this subject dovetails from this paragraph about what Google is up to:
The Authors Guild and three authors also sued Google for alleged copyright infringement related to the library book-scanning project last year. The AAP and the Authors Guild both allege Google needs to obtain permission from copyright holders before scanning in-copyright books it obtains from the libraries. Google acknowledges that it scans the books and makes their full text searchable by users of the Google Book Search service. However, Google maintains its activities are legal because it only displays short text excerpts and bibliographic information for in-copyright books.The bottom line is that digital, on demand books is where we're headed, and I think it is a good thing. Will we have to pay for this? Sure, just like for music, but this is going to revolutionize the book trade. I don't pretend to know all of the ends and outs of copyright law, and the following example probably involves books that have long since outlived their copyrights, but check this out.
Aaron Lansky rescued millions of Yiddish books that would have been lost forever. Now he has undertaken a massive project, sponsored by Spielberg, to digitally scan and reprint on demand these books for public enjoyment.
Because many of our books are physically deteriorating – and because we no longer have sufficient supplies to meet demand – in 1998 we launched the Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library: a pioneering program to digitize the titles in our collection and make high-quality reprints available on demand. Our easy-to-use online catalog means that Yiddish, once the most endangered of literatures, is now the safest and most accessible.I know of at least one other effort to scan and reprint old volumes on demand, but based on the link that I have, a new volume has not been made available in a few years.
But imagine the benefits. For the consumer, there is access to old volumes that have long since been out of print or are hard to come buy. For the publisher, only books that have been purchased need be printed-from the electronic file. It is like just in time inventory.
There is also LuLu, where you can publish and print your own work on demand.
The future is now, and this is where book publishing is going-rapidly. We know from experience that if Google is on it, then it's going to be huge.
