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Open Library Goes Online With Public Domain Books

Posted by Zonk on from the shakespeare-and-company dept.

mrcgran writes "A competitor to Google Book Search emerges as the Yahoo-backed Open Content Alliance launches an 'open library' of its own. After several years of scanning and archiving, the Internet Archive and the Open Content Alliance this week unveiled the Open Library, their attempt at bringing public domain books to the masses. The Internet Archive has hosted texts for quite some time, but the Open Library makes fully-searchable, high-quality scans of books available, along with downloadable PDFs. It offers an experience designed to match paper: there's even a page-flipping animation as readers move forward and backward through the book. Ben Vershbow of the Institute for the Future of the Book says that when it comes to presentation, 'they already have Google beat, even with recent upgrades to the [Google Book Search] system including a plain text viewing option.'" We have previously discussed this project, though this is a bit more complete rundown on the initiative.

7 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. The real, fundamental problems by moderatorrater · · Score: 2, Funny

    Have they solved the actual problems that plague online book sites? You know, lack of portability, bulkiness, ability to read on the toilet easily, and the ability to lend to friends at the drop of a hat? Are those solved yet?

    1. Re:The real, fundamental problems by cmacb · · Score: 3, Funny

      "My Nokia 770 solved all of those for me..."


      Remind me not to borrow your Nokia 770.
    2. Re:The real, fundamental problems by Billosaur · · Score: 2, Funny

      I second that... cell phones and toilets are a bad combination... for a great many reasons.

      --
      GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
  2. Re:Books, Schmooks? by MadUndergrad · · Score: 2, Funny

    You're thinking of whitehouse.com. Whitehouse.org is a parody site, last time I checked.

  3. Booo! by TodMinuit · · Score: 2, Funny

    Only Internet Explorer 6+ and FireFox are currently supported. You should download Firefox or use Internet Explorer to properly use the Flipbook viewer. So us Opera users are left in the cold, without public domain books to read? Fine. *searches for porn*
    --
    I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
  4. Re:Nothing incoming by cashman73 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Then I'm going to wait until I'm about 90 to read Harry Potter. No sense paying for it when you can get it out of public domain. Nobody tell me how it ends,... ;-)

  5. Re:Write some books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    My internet poetry is freely available on my geocities site!