[16186] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
!@!Re: [BP] Google Print vs. The Open Library vs. Project Gutenberg
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Hart)
Tue Nov 22 20:48:16 2005
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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.60.0511221540421.14335@pglaf.org>
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:42:00 -0800
Reply-To: "Michael S. Hart" <hart@pobox.com>
From: Michael Hart <hart@PGLAF.ORG>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
The Year of the Electronic Library
Obviously the Big Boys have finally discovered books on the Internet.
Just under a year ago Google's multi-million dollar media blitz of
December 14 ran hog wild through the media, getting more attention
from television, radio and print media than eBooks had received in
toto during their 35 years of existence, in spite of "The Wall St.
Journal" claim to fame as being the first to put the word INTERNET
on the front page or cover of any major media outlet in Oct, 1991,
in reference to the growing idea[l] of Project Gutenberg eBooks.
However, since Google didn't really DO anything after such a great
public relations coup, no one ended up paying any attention and it
appears as if the momentum, at least the media momentum was lost.
This was confirmed a few weeks ago when Yahoo and Internet Archive
press releases about starting a competitive eLibrary failed to put
any wind in the media's sails.
However, Google seems to have been paying attention, and finally a
release from the Google Print Library resulted, but it turned out,
sadly to say, that these releases were not turning out to be great
events as had been predicted last December 14.
Most of the books were hard to search, impossible to download, and
on subjects of little interest, and what interest there was stayed
with the various lawsuits Google was being threatened with for any
of a number of copyright problems, even though Google pretended an
enormous amount of public domain works were still copyrighted in a
concerted effort to ameliorate the situation.
Not content to let the Google Print Library and Yahoo Open Content
Alliance/Open Book Library steal all this glory, Amazon and Random
House announced their own eLibrary just a week later.
Today we saw yet another entry from The Library of Congress, as it
received 3 million dollars to start their own project, from a most
unlikely source, Google! It was suggested at today's Geek Lunch a
motivation of Google's might be to let The Library of Congress pay
the price in non-cash value, for opening the vast intercontinental
virtual prairieland to the virtual settlers, who just happed to be
an assortment of multi-billion dollar cartels, who have felt those
slings and arrows of their misfortune a little too much.
***
So, in just a single month we have seen more "action" on the parts
of these multi-billion dollar alliances than ever before, except a
person still has huge trouble actually downloading eBooks from any
of these eLibraries.
But, then again, that might NOT be their purpose, after all.
***
The original purpose of eLibraries, as Project Gutenberg set out a
while back in 1971, was to provide library materials for people to
keep, to use as sources for new editions, new libraries, etc., and
to be the source for continual improvements over the centuries.
The purpose of these new entries into the fray seems to be by some
other thing, as they do not invite readers to keep these materials
and to create new and better editions for future readers, both via
new editions, and by correcting previous editions.
The original ideal of eBooks was:
"to encourage the creation and distribution" of eLibraries, but the
Newspeak Dictionary seems to have somewhat changed definitions.
The original ideal of eBooks was also to allow every reader to read
in their own favorite program, and to use their own favorite search
programs, indexing and concordance programs, and to choose favorite
colors, margin lengths, page lengths, etc.
I can only hope there is something WE can do to keep these ideals--
such as they are--alive and thriving so WE can have our own eBooks,
or own eLibraries, the way WE want them.
Michael S. Hart
Founder
Project Gutenberg
