The Digital Book Drive's Left-Behinds

Apr 24, 2009, 16:32 (0 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Jack M. Germain)

"In the race to build a universal digital library, many important books and documents are being left behind: special edition books, religious books, historical documents, and books found in small local libraries or in private collections. Left undigitized, the information inside them will fade as the paper deteriorates.

"Despite the best efforts of organizations intent on creating exhaustive digital libraries of all human knowledge, their projects are still too fragmented to produce a reliable, universal, digital repository of all printed goods. Often, corporate decisions and budgetary considerations mean books are left behind.

"Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) More about Google Book Project and Project Gutenberg are two of the more well-known efforts to convert the printed page to a digitally viewable form. Usually, large libraries and university research directors form alliances to take on the challenge of digitizing their own collections. Their 'leave no book behind' mentality is filtering down to smaller businesses with limited revenue, driven by improvements in scanning and storage technologies. This is creating a balance of power, so to speak, that allows those without the reach and capital of Google to join in the digitization movement."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• An easy way to Spilt or Merge PDF Files in Linux(Apr 19, 2009)
• Hard Plastic Books That Talk(Apr 18, 2009)
• UK 'has the worst copyright laws'(Apr 17, 2009)
• 10 open source books worth downloading(Apr 04, 2009)
• An easy library catalog with Tellico(Apr 02, 2009)
• Sony, Google to offer 500,000 free e-books(Mar 21, 2009)
• Writing a Linux shell book the community way(Mar 20, 2009)
• Make ebooks pretty with GutenMark(Mar 09, 2009)
• All Kindles Should be Virtual(Mar 05, 2009)