Books

When Sergey Brin and Larry Page launched Google, they created an Internet juggernaut that made information easier to find. But they realized that without the information contained in humankind's decidedly analog books, there would always be a gaping hole in online information.

To bridge this gap, Google Print (now called Google Books) was born, driven by a goal of digitizing entire libraries of books. With these books online, anyone with an Internet connection could use keyword searches to locate information spanning the entire history of publishing. The implications of this project are profound in myriad ways.

For example, scholars could use the service to access a rare manuscript in Cairo, Egypt. Medical researchers might scroll through studies from all over the world in weeks instead of years, drastically reducing research times. Scientific studies of every kind could be completed on expedited timelines, too. And of course, high school and college students could tear through research papers at warp speed, with better citations and higher-quality information.

Google Books proponents also argue that the world's treasure trove of books will also be safer once they've all been digitized. Natural disasters such as fire and earthquakes, which have destroyed swaths of written history before, wouldn't ruin a database with redundant copies of files stored in multiple locations. An online repository would be better-suited to resist war and political upheaval. And then there's the simple fact that as paper ages, it becomes brittle. There are some works that librarians have to take special care of to prevent their falling apart.

In short, Google Books could mean better access to more information for more people than ever before. It could revolutionize the Internet in ways that we can't yet imagine.

But as with all revolutions, the Google Books project is not without controversy. Citizens, politicians and companies from around the world have justifiable concerns about privacy, copyright law and antitrust issues related to Google Books. Keep reading to see how Google quickly scans millions upon millions of pages of books, and how some people are doing everything they can to handicap this daring project.

It goes without saying that scanning millions of books is a gargantuan undertaking. The technical challenges alone are significant. Traditional scanning equipment uses a glass plate that completely flattens each page, ensuring that OCR (optical character recognition) software is able to identify the letters and numbers printed on the pages being digitized. Once scanned, those characters can be edited and searched with a computer.

To eliminate the need for glass plates and reduce the possibility of damage to the books it wants to preserve, Google patented a new book scanning process. Workers simply place the book on an open book scanner that has neither a glass plate nor any other equipment that would flatten a book. Google's advanced software scans the book and accounts for curvature of the pages, meaning there's no degradation of character recognition. The scanners work at a rate of about 1,000 pages per hour.

Google Books is a Google service that makes discovering book content easier for us on the web. It started way back in 2004 and since then its mission has been to digitally scan and archive tons of book.

Knowing the breakneck pace that Google sets, one day it could become the absolute knowledge tank as far as books go. The ongoing Partner Program and the Library Project are helping to rocket things along.

But Google Books does not allow you to download whole books unless it’s in the Public Domain. It also does not display the entire text of other books. What’s the point of using google books, you might say?

Plenty, if you can “˜exploit’ the information that’s freely available. Just think, there are more than a million books in the Public Domain alone. If you have a yen for information and a zest for lifelong learning, here are ten ideas for using Google Books.

Build Your Own Personal Library for Lifelong Learning

Building your own reference library (My Library) with Google Books is a good way to start off. Google Books allows you to read an entire book that’s out of copyright in Full View. Then for some books you can flip a few selected pages to have a Limited Preview. Even with Snippet View and books tagged with No Preview Available, you can get some idea what the book is all about.

Looking at the contents of an index for a particular book, gives me some ideas for further reading. Use the index like a keyword list and you can dive into the web for more information

Also, think of your bookshelf on Google Books as a reading list for lifelong learning. To own a book you can take the help of the links provided alongside the book excerpt. From casual reading to serious research, the snippets of information are like untapped wealth. Where To Research Material For Your Homework Where To Research Material For Your Homework Read More

You can do the reverse bit of adding the books on your physical bookshelf to the My Library in Google Books. Here’s how someone did it with a simple barcode scanner.