Quoting the introduction to the copy of Hamlet I just downloaded:
"This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world’s books discoverable online.
"It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. ... Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that’s often difficult to discover. Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book’s long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you."
It's really very simple, if you're looking at a public-domain book, a
download button loads with the page and tells you how large the file
is. Just click it and the PDF is downloaded. For an example, check out Pride and Prejudice or Origin of Species, depending on your tastes.
Unfortunately, these are just scanned images, not text. If you read any reports that these files would be instantly searcheable (as I did) those reports were false. However, the books are instantly searcheable online, proving that Google does indeed have the ability to read and convert these documents into text. Let's hope that's next on the agenda.
"This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world’s books discoverable online.
"It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. ... Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that’s often difficult to discover. Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book’s long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you."
It's really very simple, if you're looking at a public-domain book, a
download button loads with the page and tells you how large the file
is. Just click it and the PDF is downloaded. For an example, check out Pride and Prejudice or Origin of Species, depending on your tastes.Unfortunately, these are just scanned images, not text. If you read any reports that these files would be instantly searcheable (as I did) those reports were false. However, the books are instantly searcheable online, proving that Google does indeed have the ability to read and convert these documents into text. Let's hope that's next on the agenda.
Via GoogleBlog
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Comments (5)
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written by a guest, September 01, 2006
Hasn't this been done? In text? For years?
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written by GTW, September 05, 2006
Now only if they had enough green energy to power all the monitors people are going to "stare at" for "hours"! :P
Funny how a race condition between two "green" technologies could lead to totally non-green outcome.
Funny how a race condition between two "green" technologies could lead to totally non-green outcome.
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written by Hank, September 05, 2006
People will never read Shakespeare on an LCD. Not the majority of people anyway. It's too tiring for the eyes. People will read on E-Ink displays like the Sony E-Reader, which will display about 10,000 pages on 2 AA batteries.
This is definitely greener than paper.
This is definitely greener than paper.
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written by GTW, September 11, 2006
Hank, I find it hard to see how you can be so sure about people running out and buying E-Ink readers just because Google put some old books out. It's still a race condition until it comes to a stage when "people will" use E-Ink.
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