Archives Tag: Google Books
But Really, How Evil *Is* Google?
Today, an article came across my screen about the Google scanning project and I felt I really should share this. Let’s look at this excerpt from the Open Content Alliance website. Take for example the digital copy that Google gives to a library in exchange for scanning its copy of a book. Previously, all library [...]
Full StorySearching for Books Using Android
Google has been holding a few tricks up their sleeve and have been waiting to pull them out. It’s time. Google’s Android product is a platform for mobile phones, a competitor would be Windows Mobile. Google announced that they are rolling out some software which will allow Android-powered phones to search Google Books’ platform for [...]
Full StoryCornell University Joins the Google Library Project
This sparked a particular interest for me since my father graduated from Cornell a number of years back. But according to the Google Book blog, Cornell has joined forces with the other schools that already exist in the project. So what exactly does this entail for Google and Cornell? More books, more information, more data to sort through and organize. Google still has their mission statement at heart, “…to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” This is a key statement to look at when Google does anything, especially join forces with major universities such as Cornell. How will this positively effect the Google Library Project? Simple; Cornell has thousands upon thousands of resources available and through Cornell’s agreed participation, Google can index data more quickly and at an ever faster rate than before. Congratulations to Cornell for joining the force of the Library Project.
Full StoryAmazon Just Says No
BsuinessWeek reports: Amazon.com Inc. has objected to providing details about its book search feature to rival Google Inc., which says it needs them to fight copyright infringement allegations from a group of authors and book publishers. Google says it needs the details to battle recently consolidated class action lawsuits filed against it by several major book publishers and The Authors Guild, which collectively allege Google didn’t get the proper approvals before making their work available to anyone with an Internet connection.
Full StoryGoogle Fights Back Publishers
Google’s legal team has been busy and they are starting to fight back with subpoenas. Google’s alone on this book search database though. Yahoo! and Microsoft are teamed up as part of the Open Content Alliance which first obtains permissions from authors and publishers before making specific sections of copyrighted material available to the public. Google intends to find out through its subpoenas exactly what criteria the rival scanning projects intend to use judge what constitutes fair use, as well as financial details of how book sales would be affected and digital rights management features. Google isn’t likely going to back down any time soon on this matter. Google is aiming to be a global source for information and this is one of the major steps in doing that. iTWire.com.au
Full StoryGoogle Book Search Pays Off
So a lot of publishers and authors were pretty mad at Google for scanning copyrighted material, but there’s another side to that coin. There are always people that are very happy about it. It seems that some of the smaller publishers have seen their sales increase quite a bit because of the search. Many people would have not otherwise known about those books or publishers, but since the book search allows for those smaller publishers to reach the world, more and more people have been buying their books. This increased visibility for publishers and authors is good. Not everyone loves it, but as always, you can’t please everyone. (via Slashdot @ Reuters)
Full StoryJust Search for Your Whole Book
Something I never noticed — maybe because I rarely use the book search portion of Google — is that Google Book Search has the ability to search “all books” or “Full view books”, which makes it very handy. If you’re looking for something in research and don’t want just clips of something, you can really dive in with full view books and read it cover to cover. I’m doing a project for my international business class right now and thought I would take a look at Google Book. I’ll probably end up using it for my senior thesis as well.
Full StoryGoogle Books Is In Your Library
Google Books now lets you see if there is a local library near you that has the book you might be interested in. Right now you cannot view the whole book online because of copyright issues, but you can view a few pages of it in order to get an idea of the book. Google Books is slowly moving to a database where they will be allowing you to view books that are at your school’s library — basically to save you time and energy — but that is still in the far distance. They have started to do it at Stanford, but it’s not many other places right now. Google Book Search
Full StoryUniversity of California Joins The Google Book Project
The University of Michigan is excited that the University of California is joining with us, the New York Public Library, Stanford, Harvard and Oxford universities in our partnership with Google. With all these universities happily participating in the Google Book Project, is it surely going to be successful. I know that I’ve used the book resource multiple times when writing term papers and have used it for other various projects as well. I’ve been quite happy with the service and I hope they continue to develop it even further.
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