digitization

Readers of Google’s scanned books were surprised to discover large pieces of the texts obscured by hands wearing pink finger condoms. Google says it was their early efforts and that the technology has been bumped up a notch to avoid this handiwork in future.

Want to digitize your personal library? BookSnap digitizes books at the speed of 2 digital cameras, making the scanning process much faster than other scanners. You no longer have to waste hours and days just to scan a single book. Still on the pricey side at $1595, not including the cameras.

The Million Book Project, also known as the Universal Digital Library, has digitized 1.5 million books in over 20 languages and made them available on a single website. At the moment, however, two-thirds of the books scanned are written in Chinese script, which doesn’t do the rest of the world much good.

The Utopia of one world library is not to be. There will be no encyclopedic record of human experience as fortold by the prophets of the wired world, despite the efforts of corporate giants to digitize the world’s books. When all’s said and done, knowledge will still be “embodied in millions of dusty, crumbling, smelly, irreplaceable documents and books.”

Many major libraries, including the Smithsonian, have declined to let Google or Microsoft scan their books for inclusion in online databases, instead choosing to go with the non-profit Open Content Alliance, even though it is less cost efficient. Why? They are “intent on pursuing a vision of the Web as a global repository of knowledge that is free of business interests or restrictions.”

Feedback is requested on the Really Modern Library project. Individuals from the arts, publishing, media, design, academic and library worlds will be gathering this month in an attempt to “shed light on the big questions about future accessibility and usability of analog culture in a digital, networked world.” They’re addressing some interesting questions here.