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Internet Archive Puts 1.6M E-Books On OLPC Laptops
waderoush writes "Brewster Kahle of the San Francisco-based Internet Archive announced today that all 1.6 million books scanned and digitized by the Archive will be available for reading on XO laptops built by the Cambridge, MA-based One Laptop Per Child Foundation. The announcement came during a session on electronic books and electronic publishing at the Boston Book Festival. Kahle said the Archive has been collaborating with OLPC for a year to format the e-books for display on the XO laptops, some 750,000 of which are in use by children in developing countries."
You will still be reading it on a back-lit screen.
It takes a year to get some books to display right?
but if they /really/ cared for the poor children and their eyes, they would get them nooks.
This must be why the Internet Archive is almost two years behind on indexing archived files instead of the usual 6 months to one year.
I can read one book a day...
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
I still wonder why they didn't build the first XO on the ARM architecture. I only researched via Wikipedia. What I found out was that the processor they used was based on the an old line of AMD (before the Athlon came out) x86 processors. AFAIR AMD x86 processors were inferior to Intel 486 processors.
So why use such an ancient design instead of a modern day ARM. It would have extended the battery life.
I think they now changed it to the ARM.
Is there anyone here on /. that can explain why they used the x86 on the first version? While I certainly am not qualified to say wether that desing decision was good or bad I can definitely say that the XO fell way short of their goal to become a widely used education tool in many countries. Which is sad, because I think it was a great idea and in many ways a very good design.
I am also not qualified to say why the XO failed in that respect, but I believe it was more politics than either good or bad design that was the major factor behind that failure. And including a major company (like AMD) could be good politics sometimes...
How many Library of Congresses will all this data take up???
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
Is Lady Chatterly's Lover in that list?
Doesn't the OLPC only have 1GB storage? In order for 1.6million books to fit onto a 1GB card, they'd have to take up less than 1KB a piece.
what are 1.6M ebooks and do i need codec?? (post humously for obvious reason!)
Are these books mostly written in English? And the OLPC is mainly used in developing countries? I think I see a problem here...
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
I just love how we in developed nations assume that those in the 3rd world are stupid. Actually, those who have had access to decent schools are quite likely smarter than you simply due to motivation. This has been proven time after time as students from developing nations visit our Universities and as a whole out perform our students by a tremendous margin, even with the cultural, language, and social barriers that they must overcome.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
From TFA:
Kahle says the Internet Archive books will be available through the reading "activity" on the XO Laptop. (Software on the laptop is organized into groups called activities pertaining to different types of creative and educational projects.) In an upcoming version of the XO's basic software, the reading activity will also allow students to browse books from a variety of providers, Kahle says, including libraries and commercial publishers.
He drew an explicit contrast between these approach and the more closed and controlled e-book sales models being forwarded by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other distributors. But getting new, copyrighted books onto platforms that don't provide strict digital rights management protections is still a tricky business proposition--so for now, the book sharing arrangement between the Archive and OLPC is restricted to free, public-domain books.
While I'm all for this project - tell me again HOW those books are going to get to an OLPC-using kid's hands?
As other posters have pointed out - there's the issue of indexing this stuff properly.
And there's still distribution to think about.
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/09/09/10/0318203/Pigeon-Turns-Out-To-Be-Faster-Than-S-African-Net
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Are the books in English? Since the OLPC is being shipped to many countries where English is not the primary language, if they don't offer them in the local language, I doubt that this will be usefull. BTW, I'm from Uruguay, where all the students from public schools were given an XO. This is called Plan Ceibal.
PEÃ'AROL: SerÃs eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera
Why respond seriously to such blatantly obvious trolls?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I cannot help but mention the Project Gutenberg [http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page] which provide e-books for free. This is achieved by the use of volunteers who may proofread a single page (or more) a day. Everyone one can participate. There are opportunities at all levels of difficulty for proof-reading, in many languages and on many topics.
Good question. His ignorant comment and the fact that I didn't have any Mod points left me no choice?
I guess I just get tired of ignorant, raciest, bigoted, and hateful people and hope that maybe, just maybe, a reply will convince them to actually reconsider their beliefs.
And no... I am not holding my breath.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Yeah, that's cool you can say "it has 1,600,000 books" but how are they categorized? Is the interface for selecting and searching for books intuitive? If the laptops are targeted to a younger audience are the selected books at an appropriate reading level for the age? I mean, this is really only useful if they can create a really, really, good front end.
And how many of these books are in Spanish? Or French, or Farsi, or what have you? And with pictures?
I used to work in a small, poor town in the developing world. My community had a library with about 10 linear feet of shelving. All the books were in Spanish, but . . .
None of them had pictures.
The "local interest" titles were these impenetrable desk-breakers of 19th century poetry by some aristocrat from the big city.
There were only two or three fiction titles. Dante's Inferno counts, right?
I never once saw a child pick a book off that shelf, not even after an hour's wait while Mom ran an errand. There was nothing there that would appeal to a beginning reader. Hell, given the historical literacy handicaps in the region, those titles would have defeated most of the adults I knew.
If you want to encourage literacy (in the developing world or elsewhere) you've got to start small. Pictures. Rhymes and silly sounds. It takes years to get most kids up to chapter book readiness. Canterbury Tales ain't where you start!
John Hancock wuz here.
I tought in collecting around as much children books i could for that same target, there is a lot of books that enjoyed as child that are public domain by now and would be great to be easily available for all those children, but wasnt so trivial to find them in spanish.
Probably the initial target should be focus (o at least, discriminate or categorize) on books for children, and preferably in spanish (as probably is the language of the countries where has been more widely deployed so far, they are pointing to Uruguay, but i think is being deployed or tested in more countries of south america by now, and in far bigger numbers than in i.e. africa or asia).
And if well PDF is "good enough", for flexibility (as in looks as good in both screen orientations), speed for download and size that would be using in the device will be great to have most of them in HTML or another format with a good reader already included in the XO (or that could be easily included, i think there are at least one activity for it that read ePub format already)
When access is very limited, the best get in. Let's not consider those representative of the rest who maintain their hellholes of origin as perpetual disasters which are the reason the gifted who can afford it run for the West in the first place!
Once the floodgates open, we get a broader spectrum of immigrants including the very backward.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Immigrants from some countries do typically perform above average in American universities, but generally only those from countries where the immigration distribution is skewed towards the better-educated upper-class of that country, as with those who come to the U.S. from India, China, and parts of Africa. In cases where we get a different socioeconomic skew, like with Mexican immigrants, the same patterns of overachievement aren't borne out.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
when there is Google around?
I don't call people stupid, just chiming in, but in case you hadn't thought of it there's a built-in motivation to do well with a student visa. Becuase if they fail to perform, they are sent back. They have an incentive unlike a lot of students who are just paying for school and sometimes don't even have to earn the money themselves. Plus, the immigratns that end up getting these student visas are generally achievers to begin with. So the pool is of smarter people.
How are these 1.6M books to be distributed - via Internet downloads? And the language issue raised by others is a concern as well (the 1.6M books are in a variety of languages) limiting the number of books that are useful in a given country/region... While there are many "classics" available in the public domain, how useful/timely are those fiction books to people (literally) starving for agriculture, technology, and legal resources? I'm glad these books are available to XO users, how about others? Make these files available to other ebook readers/computer users and you'll generate some real interest...
Ken
Assuming other cultures are stupid is quite natural - just look at how developed urban populations despise rural people. The disgust is quite open and appears in the popular media daily.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I just love how we in developed nations assume that those in the 3rd world are stupid.
The nineteenth and early twentieth century American student was not stupid.
But only a fraction would have the opportunity to go on to high school or formal vocational training.
OLPC's original mission was outreach to the poorest of schools and the youngest and most isolated of children and their families.
There is no point to loading the XO with an enormous - essentially random - collection of books these kids and their parents cannot read.
If you reread my comment... I actually qualified my statement with "those who have had access to decent schools."
What I am suggesting is that the GGP's ignorant statement "can they even read?" was ignorant due to it's assumption that a third world country wouldn't benefit from this program because they must all be illiterate.
I suppose I should have mentioned that availability of a variety of reading materials has always led to increased literacy within a population where education and literacy is valued. Put as many libraries you want here in Detroit, and I doubt there will be more literacy, but put them in most 3rd world countries, and people will learn to read if they have the time.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
I addressed the availability of "decent schools" in my post... and to suggest that providing access to a variety of reading material is pointless is just false.
I don't care how poor and isolated a person is, if there is a desire to learn, someone with the skill to teach, and books to be read, and time, then literacy will increase. And once literacy is established, the most important thing is access to a wealth of materials to read.
Years ago it was uncommon for even wealthy families to have access to more than a few books, this includes borrowing from family and friends. As publishing technology made books more readily available, literacy increased. The more literate the population, the more that having a large variety of books became valuable.
So essentially, yes there may be issues where many of the recipients of an OLPC cannot read the books initially. But lets say they learn, with help of a teacher, their peers, and their OLPC. As they gain skill, don't you think being able to research and study various fields of interest is a good thing.
Essentially, suggesting that this is a wasted effort is like suggesting that supporting your local library is stupid because only a small part of your community actually uses it.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Assuming that many of the the books are in English, the OLCP should have an app which teaches English; one which assumes no prior knowledge.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Chances are that person isn't really that ignorant, raceist [sic] or bigoted. They just say things like that to get you riled up.
:x
And Project Gutenberg's e-books treat the reader with respect: no DRM, no special format hassles, wide availability, sharing-friendly (no need to fear what happens on copying, loaning, or selling your copy at a yard sale), easy to annotate, readable on every device, and available gratis (but worth money).
Many thanks to Project Gutenberg for all their hard work. Project Gutenberg sets a great example the public should keep in mind when commercial outfits offer significantly less for considerable forfeiture of your freedom and money.
Digital Citizen
May I ask what you're doing what to remedy this? It seems to me that working to fix this is more productive than only complaining about it. Are there some technical people working on a specification so people can enjoy free books with pictures in free formats?
I sense you mean well, but I suggest you'd do better to convince people to help you improve the state of e-books by asking for assistance instead of telling people in what order they should donate their time to address the under-served. People need all sorts of things simultaneously, not some things in a particular order.
I was not a child who wanted "picture books", I found the pictures undermined my imagination. I did a far better job casting, clothing, and set dressing the story in my head than any illustrator. I imagine there are other children out there who don't want to be prejudiced about how things looked, just as I imagine there are kids who want pictures to go enhance the reading. We'll get to the point where more people's literary needs are met in freedom. Clearly things are heading in the right direction and with your help and experience in what you believe people want, I'm sure we'll get there faster.
Digital Citizen
If there really is 1 Laptop per child. AND there is at least 1 child from all 6809 known spoken languages (http://www.lsadc.org/info/pdf_files/howmany.pdf) That's just 2350 books. Gotta read the fine print.
I've nothing of importance to say, now go away before I taunt you with a second sig!
let me give you a hint, retard. It's pretty easy to learn to read if you can read a little and have books. By the way, I've worked in a lot of east Africa, and yet to find a place where there were no english speakers, and had absolutely no privacy when speaking Spanish. Why am I feeding a troll?
Dear me, there are a lot of nay-sayers posting here. I wonder why? I can't inherently see something terrible about providing a large number of books for the world's poorest, yet the comments here would have me believe that it is hopeless, and everybody has an anecdote about why there's no point in even trying.
so why are the astroturfers out en force for this story?
anyway, i say good on the olpc project for trying to bring knowledge to the poor, the underprivileged, the down-trodden, the economically abused and the politically silenced. i still hope that we will someday look back on this project and think that it was a major stepping stone in our journey towards human rights, education and dignity for all.
Misleading headline. Even after character recognition and heavy compression, 1.6 million books are going to come out at more than 200k per book. That's .2 million MB, or 200 GB. On a normal laptop with a rotating 2.5" drive, that'd be infeasible.
The OLPC has no rotating drives, but rather a 1GB solid-state chip. (Which makes sense, reducing temperature, energy usage as well as shock sensitivity.)
So they probably mean they'll be bundling some software for reading it online.
on TV
If they got infested by MS as people claim, ARM is an excellent low power processor with one issue: It can't run Windows ;)
"Finally, an use for all those unsold laptops"?
I am not devoid of humor.
I just love how we in developed nations assume that those in the 3rd world are stupid. Actually, those who have had access to decent schools are quite likely smarter than you simply due to motivation. This has been proven time after time as students from developing nations visit our Universities and as a whole out perform our students by a tremendous margin, even with the cultural, language, and social barriers that they must overcome.
Obviously they ARE stupid or they wouldn't have chosen to be born in those 3rd world countries. Sheesh!