This post is part of the Young Caucasus Women Blog Mentor Project
(each sunday a different person posts on a topic. Throughout the week young women from the Caucasus region and the weekly blogger comment and post about the topic. I am up this week).
Click here to see the weekly posts
Click on these links to see the weekly posts and comments: armenia, georgia, azerbaijan
Hi everyone - My name is Maya and I live in Victoria, B.C. (Canada). I am currently a student, but will be graduating in only 3 weeks! It has been great reading all the different posts and comments over the last couple months! I am really looking forward to blogging and talking this week about books and digitization (ie: making a digital copy of a book). I chose this topic because I am a knowledge junkie and two of my favorite ways to learn about new things is from books and searching the web.
I have always loved books. In fact, when I was just a baby my mom used to give my sisters and I books and let us rip them up and play with them just so we could smell and touch them. My parents wanted books to be a huge part of our lives. We would always go to the library and get bags and bags of books for the week. I love libraries. As a student I pretty much live in the library, doing research, writing papers, studying and hanging out with buddies (and sneaking food).Technology has also played a huge role in my life. I believe my laptop and my internet connection together have given me the best education. I love the research capabilities Google provides. I can search for anything my heart desires. Since books and search are two vital ways for me to eat up more knowledge, I applaud initiatives that combine the two, a prime example being Google Book Search.
Google Book Search enables a user to search through the contents of books from the largest libraries in the world: Michigan, Stanford, Harvard, Oxford and the New York Public Library (well, when the project is complete). It is helpful to think of it as a huge digital card-catalogue, with Google search capabilities. If the book is in the public domain then all its content will be free to look at in the web browser. However, if the book is protected by copyright, then only a snippet around the search word will be shown. There will also be information on where to buy the book, including online retailers like Amazon and nearby libraries that have the book.
I love this initiative because it allows people all over the world to discover books from the dark corners of these libraries, on any topic they want. It breathes life into old books by making them discoverable to those looking for the information that it contains. For example, the University of Michigan had an old 1860 book on “Bees and bee-keeping”, that mainly collected dust on the library shelf. Once it was digitized it turned out to be the Holy Grail of beekeeping and now can be used by bee-keepers all over the world. It allowed this book to be found and its knowledge to be discovered, where it would have otherwise sat unused (click on the book link to play around with Google Book Search and the bee book).
Another really important thing about digitization initiatives is that they grant immortality to old books. Most books that were written prior to the use of computers have never been digitized. This means that a book could potentially become extinct once all the pages have faded away. Practically speaking, many books are already extinct, as they are out of print and very hard to find. Making a digital copy of all the books would preserve the knowledge within, so that when they fall into the public domain they will be available for free on the web.
The biggest bonus of all is that it provides this mass database of information to anyone with an internet connection, anywhere in the world, for free. This free access to knowledge would provide the world with a great intellectual surge. Five huge libraries of information would be accessible to developing nations worldwide, with only small libraries and limited resources.
However, in order to search inside the books, Google needs to scan each individual book. This makes a digital “copy” of the book. Making a copy triggers copyright law, requiring the owner to authorize all copies. The Publisher's Association and the Author’s Guild own the copyright to many of the books involved in the project. They are suing Google for massive copyright infringement, unless they pay them huge, huge licensing royalities (since there are tons and tons of books involved).In copyright law there is an exception to the “no copy” rule; it’s called “fair use”. It makes it legal for people to quote, critique, copy & paste a chunk of an article into a blog post, etc.. I believe that making a digital copy of a book, for the sole purpose of searching its contents, should be fair use. The contents of the book is not freely available. It is not a substitute for the book in the market place. In fact, it will probably increase the sale of books and create a new mode of distribution for authors. This means more books and potentially more profit to authors. This is a great thing. Don't you agree?
Do you think 'digitization' is important? Why?
Are books a big part of your life? What is your favorite book?
Do you go to the library often?
Do you love to search the web? What is something weird that you’ve searched for? Did you find it?
Name a great book: Succulent Wild Woman, By Sark.
Quote a random sentence out of the book: “Fill your life with tiny and large adventurous moments.”
For more links and info on digitization and Google Book search click here!
