And everyone else – maybe including parents, teachers, and librarians who worry that students have forgotten about libraries and media other than the Web! At least there will be more good material to find on the Web, with Google’s announcement today. Google is adding some of the world’s best libraries to its database, bringing them “to life online,” as CNET put it. “Google itself was born out of a library digitization project at Stanford,” CNET reported, “and its founders had planned all along to build a vast searchable index of books.” Now it has the technology and the resources, the company told CNET. It has already reached agreements of various sorts to digitize at least out-of-print and copyrighted works in the collections of Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford Universities’ libraries, as well as that of the University of Michigan (all of its 7.4 million volumes, as well as Stanford’s), and the New York Public Library. Google is underwriting the cost of digitizing the books at each library (the process will take years), and they will be searchable exclusively at Google. This is in addition to the launch of Google Scholar, for searching academic papers online (here’s an in-depth view of Scholar at Infotoday). [Google’s search competitors, Yahoo, MSN, and Amazon, with it’s new A9, are hard at work upgrading their databases too, CNET adds.]
The sooner the better, many educators say, according to the Associated Press, citing one student – after being told some sourcing for a paper needed to be from books – asking a Georgia Tech professor where one could find a book. “It’s a paradox to some that so many young Americans can be so accepting of online information whose origin is unclear,” the AP reports. Books in Google’s database will be clearly labeled as such. This is the tech story of the week so far, arguably of 2004. The New York Times had a great piece offering libraries’ perspective on e-books. And here’s the BBC’s coverage and the Washington Post’s round-up, “Google – 21st Century Dewey Decimal System,” which – the Post adds – “raises big questions about whether a for-profit company should become a gatekeeper to such vast storehouses of knowledge.” For more on kids, research, and critical thinking, see my lead article in the 5/30/03 issue.
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