Slashdot Mirror
Google's Library Up and Running
An anonymous reader writes "It seems that Google Print results are beginning to appear on searches. For
those who don't know, Google has been scanning from libraries from some of the world's
greatest universities in order to compile a freely accessible online library. An easy way to turn up these results is to simply type "book", and then
whatever you want to search for.
For instance, book origin of species will turn up the
full text of Charles Darwin's controversial treatise. 20,000
leagues, Oliver Twist and Pride and
Prejudice and m o r e are all there in full.
It'll be interestin to see how publishers deal with this if demand for these
books declines. In the meantime, would anyone like to point out any good books?" Hopefully, Google can also start to index some books that are being released in the Creative Commons/alternative open licenses.
It'll be interestin to see how publishers deal with this if demand for these books declines. In the meantime, would anyone like to point out any good books?"
Here is a hint that will help and not hurt the publishers. Put online out of print books. I would like to make the same argument for out of print music and movies and scientific journals as well which ironically, could hold huge profits for studios and publishing houses. After all, this is the ideal for long tail businesses, right? if these businesses could release for nominal fees all of the movies, music and books that have already paid for themselves, Google (or iTunes or iMovie or iPub or whatever) could serve as the front end which would allow for the finding of said information and then the publishing houses could make money on products that long ago had paid for themselves and created profits. This is almost like free (as in beer) money for them and low cost media for us.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I clicked on Pride and Prejudice -- the page is an image (dynamically generated with search phrases highlighted). My gripes: (1) context menus are disabled (so, may be difficult to save the image from the page), and (2) there is a big "copyrighted material" sign on the side. In my opinion, they should have scanned the public domain version of the novel -- like what Gutenberg does...
S
That's correct, if you read http://print.google.com/. They only uploaded books from publishers who granted permission and university liberaries. That's only fare in some ways, as long as a book is recent enough it would really hurt sales to offer it online.
...well. Will many people read them, on-line? Even working in the IT industry; even with good LCD monitors, laptops, eBooks and whatever I've still noticed a strong tendency (and one that I'm very guilty of) to destroy great swathes of forest to generate the paper to print out the on-line doc so I can digest it better.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I just browsed around and these books are not actually "available" to read in full. The only pages you can get at are those with matches to your search. You can't just choose to go to page 1, and click "next page" until you get to the end of the book. If you want to actually read these books in full, try something like http://www.online-literature.com/
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
It'll be interestin to see how publishers deal with this if demand for these books declines.
That's a very big if indeed - I wouldn't want to read a 300-page book from screen if it's still available in print.
The decrease in sales to people who would (will) do so, could very well be compensated by the increase in sales from people who wouldn't have known about a certain book otherwise.
"Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
Do they read those from Project Gutenberg? I'm not sure how many do.
While I get excited about the prospect of "free" literature, I find that I don't take advantage of it. The main reason is that I don't feel like reading a novel while sitting in front of the computer. This is especially difficult to do while sitting on the toilet, or on a plane or train, or on a toilet on a plane or a train. Sure, I could bring a laptop, but it's a lot more cumbersome than a paperback.
I've considered printing them out, but this would be much more expensive than just purchasing a paperback (or, in a lot of cases, hardback) edition, even using my antique laserjet. This might make some sense for rare OOP books, that's about it.
What we need is a really cheap, really good e-book reader that accepts multiple and non-proprietary formats.
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
On that note, how do you jump to a specific page?
There are some features that are apparently only possible by editting the URL. The user interface could use some work.
I'm getting the strong impression that Google does not want you actually reading entire works through this service.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Charles Darwin's controversial treatise.
How is it controversial? Not all of us live in USA, you know.
For instance, book origin of species will turn up the full text of Charles Darwin's controversial treatise.
I think it's sad that "The origin of species" is referred to as controversial. What's next, Newton's "Principia Mathematica" considered controversial?
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
In most parts of the world, Origin of Species hasn't been controversial for well over a century.
Let me join you.
I recommend Homer. The Iliad or The Odyessy are two of the greatest books ever written, start with the Odyssey.
Following in the grand-parent posts' steps, I can recommend Timequake by Vonnegut as an underrated book. But back to the public domain.
Aristiophanes is the only comedian as funny as Monty Python, check him out though you'll have to read up on your mythology and other Greek lit. But there is nothing like Aristophanes, he is outrageous. Lysystrata [The Breaker of Armies] is placed in the [historical] war between Athens and Sparta, and the women of Greece declare a sex strike till peace is made.
I've also enjoyed the Tragedians (Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus), you'd think they are boring but it's pithy and exciting exciting, nothing near as depressing as Million Dollar Baby.
In fact, check out any of the Greco-Roman stuff, you'll be blown away.
Needle Nardle Noo
If you go into a library these days on a college campus you notice something perhaps a little disturbing - almost no students are actually looking at books - they are all on the computers looking up stuff online. Now that even books are being posted - in their entirety - online, why should students.. or for that matter, anyone, actually make the trip to the library anymore to look up information? There will be archives and book-based libraries well into the future, but will their purpose simply become a hard-copy back-up for all the information online? And will libraries.. eventually.. simply become massive electronic databases themselves.. actual hard-copy codex books put away in some climate-controlled basement somewhere never to be seen? I think we are looking at the future right now, and there is a big transition already underway.
thanks - brad, http://www.googleadvisor.org
As already mentioned, typesetting isn't an issue since we have electronic typesetting with LaTeX, roff, etc. The brand-new-off-the-shelf price is extreme because
a) the Ph.D. that wrote the sucker wants his big fat check for his doctorate status - he didn't earn three degrees and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to rake in a measley 22 grand a year
b) the publishing company wants their share of the big fat check because that's what they do
c) the campus bookstore and other textbook dealers know that kids have to buy the books in order to complete their classes. The demand therefore is garaunteed.
d) the bookstores also know there is an annual flood of used books that students must get rid of, and use that opportunity to replenish their supplies at a low cost.
Because of these factors, the new price on the book is large, since the new books have to compete for sales not only with other textbooks but also with the used copies in circulation, and the resale value of the books is low for the student, and high for the vendor. That's what's most alarming to students. When you spend $750 on ragged used books for 5 classes, you feel a little jipped when you sell them all back and the most you can get is $30. Then you go back to the bookstore for next semester, and see that each of those used books you sold are back on the shelf for $80 a pop.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
Here's a less popular viewpoint, at least amongst professors.
Quit using your class to sell your textbook.
Look, I don't care how many PhD's you have in Math, your personal Calculus textbook is no different than any other. In fact, you didn't even make any stunning breakthroughs in the field of undergraduate integration and derivation, so quit writing a new version every year!
Students wouldn't have to pay $120 a textbook if the professors didn't want it to be that way.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
And my retort is this: Why does every professor feel the need to write and publish their own textbook? It's not the dificulty about it so much as the ridiculous duplication of effort that annoys me so much about it. While there are exceptions to any rule, some of the *worst* textbooks I've ever used were written by the course's instructor.
So yes, writing textbooks is hard work and deserves compensation, but every professor writing their own textbook that all have the same information and requiring *THAT* text book for the course is what makes it both unreasonably expensive and unfair for the students.
Three words "publish or perish"
If the professor can get someone to publish his textbook, even if it has to sell at $300 a copy to post a profit, he gets to toss another publication on his resume.
If he's tenure track, he needs those publications for job security.
Further, lots of profs are aware that, if they write the text book they don't have to worry about changes in the course materials. Any new versions they put out (no matter how minor the changes) are versions they control. Thus, no being blindsided by changes in the text. In other words, it's less work to acutualy plan and teach the class once the text is out there.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
The way I see it, there isn't a "most of the world" with a reliable split. The best I can do is to split it as follows:
Depending on how you want to weight each region, you might find that Origin is controversial to most of the world, or you might not.
As the pope has officially sanctioned the theory of evolution (short form: God created Man by means of Evolution), I'd expect Darwins book to be rather uncontroversial in catholic countries.
In Hindu/Buddhist/Moslem countries I'd espect the particular book as rather controversial. Either because the people are modern/secular/western oriented, and accept it, or are conservative and just see it as an insignificant example of western decadance.
The only group I see objecting vehemontly to the particular book is fanatical protestant fundamentalists, and the only place I see those in any signficant numbers are rural USA.
Actually, I'm not surprised at all. If a google just returned some random version of the Bible, what kind of message would some fundie think was being said? "Google is evil because they don't think my version of the Bible is the real one!"
When it comes to versions, there are so many different versions of the Bible that it nearly makes dictionary printings look tiny by comparison. Think of how many different translations into how many different languages there have been. Then there are all the revisions of those translations.
When you do a search for "Catcher in the Rye", you're basically limited to a single work written very recently. Just the English versions of the Bible over the last few hundred years dwarf it.
Be glad life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all this.