Google's World Brain

I've often wondered how Google convinces libraries, such as Harvard, to allow the super-rich company to digitize books for free. Now I know. A new documentary "Google and the World Brain", which, by the way, is described by TechCrunch as a very anti-Google movie, explains: "They pitch it as a way to avert disasters like the burning of Alexandria or the flooding of Tulane University’s library during Hurricane Katrina." Of course, any librarian worth his or her salt would want to avoid a disaster. But authors, in particular the Author's Guild, have objected and asked the courts for $3 billion from Google for scanning copyrighted books. However the Guild settled for $125 million; but then a District Court judge dismissed the settlement. So we are unresolved. The bottom line to understand about all this is that Google is not interested in making books available for reading as much wanting to mine the data for all its worth.

Going Dutch

From all around the world, I think you'll be reading more reports like this one in Publishing Perspectives: "The National Library of the Netherlands (KB) and Google Netherlands, which began in 2011 to digitize 160,000 books from the library’s collection, yesterday announced that 80,000 of those titles have been scanned and are now available to the public. . . The digitized books are 'full text' searchable and available for free through Google Books as well as the web service boeken.kb.nl." I know for instance that the British Library is doing a similar thing. And libraries throughout the world should be following suit. Back to the Netherlands. So if you want to read a book in Dutch, you're in luck. You'll be as they say "Going Dutch" with a little help from Google.