I read an article by Robert Darnton from the NY Review of Books, and learned that for the last four years, Google has been digitizing millions of books, including many covered by copyright, from the collections of major research libraries, and making the texts searchable online. The authors and publishers objected that digitizing constituted a violation of their copyrights. After lengthy negotiations, the plaintiffs and Google agreed on a settlement, which will have a profound effect on the way books reach readers for the foreseeable future. What will that future be?
The other day I was writing a book review for my Sociology class on the book, "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down," by Anne Fadiman, {Highly recommend this read!} and I was trying to directly quote a paragraph in the book that I vividly remember reading but I could not find the page it was located in the book!! I thought to myself, "I wish there was a google search on my book so I could find the exact words to write into my report." Then a lightbulb went off! "Duh you can search Google Books"...and sure enough my book was on there and I was able to search a few keywords that lead me to the exact page my quote was found. This right here is the ultimate future of books. Google Books is highly accessible and easy to reference! Great stuff!
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