No more late fees? Books at a click of the mouse? No old book smell? Sign me up!Source:http://www.newyorker.com/images/2007/02/05/p465/070205_r15903_p465.jpg
Google, a name synonymous with searching for information on the internet has recently embarked on an ambitious project to go one step further in its quest of being the largest information database on the internet. The company which gave us the widely popular Google search engine is on its way to amassing a gargantuan collection of books on the internet by scanning entire books and storing them on their database. This involves mainly books that are under public domain; books that not copyrighted or has no one owning the intellectual properties(IP) to them.
The library already has an impressive collection of books available for download and viewing on and on The Official Google Blog, one can find a taste of what is there in the Google Library, which boasts work by Shakespere and Dante amongst others.
Maureen Walsh (2006) states that reading from an internet site or hypertext is different from material in print form. She goes on to say material on the internet “vary in the modes they use, but they have the potential to combine words and images in complex structures”. She also suggests that readers can choose different pathways depending on their interest, in which the way a reader progresses through an article is in a non linear form.
Thus the Google Library Project may have the potential to revolutionize the way we treat classic literature. By having books online, one can integrate new forms of immersion (Reading Gets Wired, 2007) such as having the ability to search for particular bits of information in a book at any time. In addition to that, since books are scanned online, the methods of presentation must be suitable for view on a computer screen and elements such as layout and accessibility must be taken into account.
In my opinion, the Google Library Project is an excellent step by Google to easily make available classic literature to a generation that has grown up on cyberspace, away from print based materials. This will open up a whole new world to those that are uncomfortable with reading a book on paper, but don’t mind reading it on a computer screen.
References
Download The Classics, Official Google Blog, viewed 10th November 2008
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/download-classics.html
Google Library Open For Business, Wired Magazine, viewed 10th November 2008
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2005/11/69473
Reading Gets Wired, Time Magazine, viewed 10th November 2008
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1612700,00.html
Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.
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