American Libraries |
||
Site Navigation
Left Sidebar ItemsOnline Features
Follow American Libraries news stories, videos, and blog posts on Twitter.
|
||
Google Book Search Offers Downloadable Public Domain BooksSearch engine company Google launched a service August 30 that allows users of Google Book Search to download complete copies of books that are out of copyright. Google scanned the originals from the collections of its library partners—the university libraries at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Michigan, and California, as well as the New York Public Library.The viewable images on the Web and the downloaded PDF files bear all the markings found in the original books, including library ownership stamps and marginal notes and drawings by former borrowers. Harvard University Director of Publications and Communications Peter Kosewski said in the August 31 Boston Globe that Google is helping the school accomplish its mission of distributing knowledge, not only to its students and faculty, but to the entire world. “I think the possible public good of having a great number of books online is extraordinary,” he said. The University of Michigan has made its Google-digitized books available as an enhancement of its online catalog. The new feature, called MBooks, allows students to magnify or rotate the images and provides persistent URLs for each page. Like the Google Books feature, the system is limited to government publications, works in the public domain, and works authorized for public display by the copyright holder. University of Michigan Co-interim Library Director John Wilkin said that “the materials represent a date range of more than 300 years, dozens of languages, and every major subject area in the University Library’s collection.” Posted September 1, 2006. |
Right Sidebar
|
|
