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Google Opens Digital Library to EU
Kailash Nadh writes "Google Inc. is asking European book publishers to submit non-English material to its Internet-leading search engine a move that may ease worries about the company's digital library relying too heavily on Anglo-American content. The Google Print undertaking represents a major piece of Google's effort to convert printed material into a digital format so it can be called up from any computing device with an Internet connection. By indexing the material, Google hopes to attract more visitors to its Web site and spawn more searches that generate advertising revenue."
If it weren't for the non-English books at my college library (Rutgers), I don't know what I would have done. All the English books were stolen, vandalized, or had pages torn out (partially stolen?).
Similarly, maybe the foreign language servers will has less traffic and it will be easier to get the info I need.
I'm glad I can read more than one language.
It might help you learn a few more languages. My experience is that the best way to get relatively fluent in a language is to get a copy of Harry Potter in said language and sit down with a cup of hot choccy and a dictionary.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
I hope that we don't end up getting rid of the hard copies for archival purposes...t eworsethandeath
I am not a ginat Rall fan, but he has a good point in this article...
Cultural Suicide via Digitalization
Ted Rall
NEW YORK--Compact discs won't skip. They'll play even if you scratch them. Unless you break them or set them on fire, they'll last forever. That's the sales pitch the recording industry used to convince America to switch from vinyl records to CDs. But, as anyone who owns a hairy dog or cat knows, CDs do skip. And as anyone who uses them to store computer files knows, digital data stored on them eventually vanishes in a mysterious phenomenon called "data rot." "With proper care this Compact Disc will last a lifetime," promised the packaging on the first digital recordings. Now experts wonder whether they'll make it 20 years. Without discussion or debate humanity has committed itself to the wholesale digitalization of its collective cultural and historical information base. Music, movies, manuscripts, everything from letters between presidents to merchants' financial transactions are currently created and stored in strictly digital form--a development that fulfills George Orwell's prophecy that history would become mutable, now with a few keystrokes. Even more terrifying than the likelihood that the digitalization of history will be abused in the service of tyranny is the certainty that we are setting the stage for the greatest loss of knowledge since the destruction of the Royal Library at Alexandria.
Continued here.... http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20050824/cm_ucru/afa
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Or perhaps they didn't want to tackle the whole thing at once, so they selected a few large, well known countries with languages commonly spoken and taught across the globe for their initial phase.
By the way, your gross stereotyping of America is at least as bad as that of which you are accusing Google.
Also of note: a simple search of print.google.com for Salmon Publishing (one of the larger Irish publishing houses) returns 11300 pages that are entered in the system.
I thought the problems that content overseers had with Google Books is that it's preying on content without sustainably compensating producers of it. Not "relying" on content. I guess it's OK for corporations to increase the value of content by sharing it, via the network effect, but not when humans do the same (often more effectively).
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make install -not war
From the article:
"By reaching out to European publishers, Google hopes to substantially increase the volume of non-English books in its database, said Jim Gerber, director of content partnership for Google's print program."
What it should say is:
"By reaching out to European publishers, Google hopes to substantially increase the pressure on big American publishing houses who have balked at their attempts to catalog the mass-marketed books that they make money on and which Google knows will draw shitloads of traffic to their site, pushing up their advertising revenue said Jim Gerber, director of content partnership for Google's print program."
Oh, that's not the issue, you silly man, I can hear some of you say. But as a small, independent publisher who joined Google Print several months ago and who's books are still in "pending" status, I have to wonder why they would be soliciting European publishers when they can't seem to get my few books into their Almighty Index.
Oops. Forgot. I'm a nobody. A small businees. Nodody really gives a rat's ass about my books because they don't come with instant recognition, branding, and millions of marketing dollars already spent.
My few books may be quality, but they probably won't bring in the buh-zillion hits and generate the goog-illion dollars that the Google shareholders need to justify their $285 stocks.
It's okay guys. I understand that you don't really want to be evil, it's just that as a publicly traded company you now have a fiduciary responsibility to be evil.
Read any good sonnets lately?
The Germans, as with most other European countries adopted life+50 decades ago, back when the U.S. term was still a fixed 28 plus renewal for 28.
And the EU as a whole, including Germany, adopted life+70 several years before the U.S.
Further, the EU adoption (unlike the U.S.) was fully retroactive, not just extending the terms of books under copyright, but pulling books back out of the public domain and under copyright.
The sorry fact is, compared to the EU, the U.S. has a large and healthy public domain.