.Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Data base

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

_______________ Forward Header _______________
Subject:        Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database
Author: radev () umich edu
Date:           13th December 2004 10:44:19 pm

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/14/technology/14google.html?ex=1103995810&ei=1&en=df43c36263e78f29

December 14, 2004
Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database
By JOHN MARKOFF and EDWARD WYATT 

Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search
service, plans to announce an agreement today with some of the
nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin
converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely
searchable over the Web. 

It may be only a step on a long road toward the long-predicted global
virtual library. But the collaboration of Google and research
institutions that also include Harvard, the University of Michigan,
Stanford and the New York Public Library is a major stride in an
ambitious Internet effort by various parties. The goal is to expand
the Web beyond its current valuable, if eclectic, body of material and
create a digital card catalog and searchable library for the world's
books, scholarly papers and special collections. 

Google - newly wealthy from its stock offering last summer - has
agreed to underwrite the projects being announced today while also
adding its own technical abilities to the task of scanning and
digitizing tens of thousands of pages a day at each library. 

Although Google executives declined to comment on its technology or
the cost of the undertaking, others involved estimate the figure at
$10 for each of the more than 15 million books and other documents
covered in the agreements. Librarians involved predict the project
could take at least a decade. 

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/14/technology/14google.html?ex=1103995810&ei=1&en=df43c36263e78f29

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/