WebProNews » Library

Internet Archive Turns To Books

Chris Richardson — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 16:36:42 +0000

Keeping track of the history of the Internet is a task that has fallen at the feet of Archive.org, and they do an fantastic job of preserving where the Internet has been and how many of the popular sites we visit started out. For example, check out the history of Google. You’ll immediately notice the original version of the search engine looks absolutely nothing like it does in 2011, and that also provides a good example of why the service provided by Archive.org is an important one.

With that in mind, you can understand the excitement when Archive.org announced they would begin archiving books, as well. Termed the “Physical Archive,” the goal of Archive.org is, to put it simply, “preserve one copy of every published work.” Part of the preservation process includes digitizing the content within the books, with the following goals going forward:

Because we expect day-to-day access to these materials to occur through digital means, the our physical archive is designed for long-term preservation of materials with only occasional, collection-scale retrieval. Because of this, we can create optimized environments for physical preservation and organizational structures that facilitate appropriate access. A seed bank might be conceptually closest to what we have in mind: storing important objects in safe ways to be used for redundancy, authority, and in case of catastrophe.

The blog entry discussing the project indicates not all written works will make into their physical archive, and in fact, they indicate the number of unique titles in literature is estimated to be around 100 million. Archive.org’s goal is preserve over 10 million of these individual works. To facilitate this process, Archive.org needed a physical containment unit capable of keeping these printed works protected, and, well, dry. So they turned to the shipping industry for ideas:

Based on this technical literature and specifications from depositories around the world, Tom McCarty, the engineer who designed the Internet Archive’s Scribe book-scanning system, began to design, build, and test a modular storage system in Oakland California. This system uses the infrastructure developed around the most used storage design of the 20th century, the shipping container. Rows of stacked shipping containers are used like 40′ deep shelving units. In this configuration, a single shipping container can hold around 40,000 books, about the same as a standard branch library, and a small building can hold millions of books.

An example of the storage facility in question:

Storage takes place like so:

Books are cataloged, and have acid free paper inserts with information about the book and its location,

Boxes store approximately 40 books with labeling on the outside,

Pallets hold 24 boxes each,

Modified 40′ shipping containers are used as secure and individually controllable environments of 50 or 60 degrees Fahrenheit and 30% relative humidity,

Buildings contain shipping containers and environmental systems,

Non-profit organizations own and protect the property and its contents.

While such a task should be commended, is Archive.org’s goal any different than Google’s Library Project? Aside from the fact that Archive.org has shown no indication of monetary gain with their physical archive project — perhaps the biggest difference between the two; something Google has had to address in legal venues — making their approach a little more altruistic than Google’s.

Being the non-profit that they are, Archive.org is also soliciting donations to assist in the project’s undertaking. Considering their goal, it’s actually a cause worthy of donation.

Researchers Scoff At Google Generation

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:02:49 +0000

The kids may be able to fly around the web at ludicrous speed, but if a basic search can’t find what they want, they could have a tough time digging up more information.

The next time your child hands you your cartoon butt in a battle on Acme Arsenal, you can take comfort in the little tyke’s relative inability to do the kind of critical, deeper thinking needed to make the most of searching the web.

Maybe that’s a petty statement, but after you’ve had your Foghorn Leghorn handed back to you in extra crispy for the tenth time in a row, you’ll take a moral victory over the Google Generation.

Resource Shelf said that Google Generation is a myth anyway. While the young people growing up with high speed Internet and rapid web search, a research paper from the CIBER research team at University College London said the kids have issues when the first page of the search results doesn’t have what they want.

"The untested assumption is that this generation is somehow qualitatively ‘different’ from what went before: that they have different aptitudes, attitudes, expectations and even different communication and information ‘literacies’ and that these will somehow transfer to their use of libraries and information services as they enter higher education and research careers," the report said.

Those literacies may come at the expense of "creative and independent thinking." Search engines may fit well with the college lifestyle, but when students apply the same habits with more critical sources, like electronic journals and other virtual library resources, they won’t retrieve the best results.

Wikia Schmikia: Try Out These Sites

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:39:10 +0000

Jimmy Wales and Wikia Search may be getting all the press this week, but there are resources out there you may not know.

The Wikipedia phenomenon has garnered global attention, with its community of contributors and editing policies for its encyclopedia of information. Much of the attention has lavished praise on the site, but detractors claim its flaws harm the site’s users.

Trust comes into play when it concerns information. While Wales has become a minor celebrity as Wikipedia grew, he’s no master librarian, and probably very few of the site’s contributors hold such credentials either.

This likely motivated Gary Price at Resource Shelf when he commented on the Wikia Search hubbub:

It

Google Won’t Dominate Book Search

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:00:54 +0000

Despite the hubbub generated by a New York Times report, the world of book digitization doesn’t start and end with Google, or even the participation of Microsoft and Yahoo in the Open Content Alliance.

Some libraries won’t choose to go with one of the massive Internet players for book scanning, as the New York Times noted. But the alarmist suggestion in the piece that one company could dominate the storage and distribution of public domain books appears unfounded.

We contacted Gary Price, whose knowledge and experience in library matters enlightened the topic greatly. He commented to some extent on the matter on his Resource Shelf blog, after a brief chat with WebProNews.

In brief, there are many digitization projects in place. No one organization should be able to control the playing field. Some efforts predate Google and the OCA’s forays into scanning.

Gary expressed surprise that the Times made no mention of Project Gutenberg, which has been digitizing content since 1971 (36 years for those scoring at home.) He also mentioned the Online Books Page at the University of Pennsylvania, listing over 25,000 books.

“It’s one thing to scan books, but another to make them ‘findable’,” said Gary. Digitization is just one point in the process. Organization and quick access pose significant challenges, too.

Even with its resources and skill, Google can’t become a chokepoint for public domain works, due to the duplication of efforts that have taken place. Gary offered World Public Library, an aggregator of 500,000 works, as another example of why fears of Google Book Search could be greatly exaggerated.

Google Library Foe Penning Googlization Book

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:17:46 +0000

Siva Vaidhyanathan sees reasons to worry about Google and its goal of organizing the world’s information.

Google Library Foe Penning Googlization Book

Is anyone asking Google the hard questions? Vaidhyanathan, a University of Virginia professor and blogger, doesn’t seem to think so.

The question and answer exchange between him and a reporter at The Daily Progress summarizes all the things people fear about Google, but haven’t fully questioned.

He recounted one of the big concerns, transparency, that has been raised frequently about Google. Our readers generally hear about this in the context of determining click fraud, but Vaidhyanathan sees transparency as a much broader area of interest:

The real question is not one of danger, but one of transparency. You can imagine some nightmare scenarios in which Google allows the government to have too much information about us and people are falsely profiled.

Or you can imagine that Google starts censoring access to information. I don

Searchles Adds To Video Library

Mike Sachoff — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:12:10 +0000

Searchles, a social search platform has added to its video indexing to display embeds from video sites Metacafe, Liveleak, Veoh and CollegeHumor.

Users can mashup videos from Metacafe, Liveleak, and CollegeHumor, in addition to the video sites already indexed, into a Searchles TV channel. The video additions are part of Searchles goal to offer users a single media platform that provides more creative options and user controls in managing posted video content from multiple sources, while also using the social video search influenced by a user’s groups and friends.

"We recognized the growing popularity with web users of these video sites that are full of great content. Given the almighty law of user-demand, it was only logical to offer the means to index them to our site and enable users to add them to their Searchles TV channels," said Chris Seline, CTO of Searchles.

"YouTube and Google Video are clearly still the big players in video content, but it is important to let our users take advantage of the ever-expanding competition as well — particularly if we are striving to offer our users the best social video search spanning all available popular video sources on the web. That being said, we’ll continue to keep an eye out for other video sites that emerge onto the playing field going forward."

Currently Searchles indexes video from YouTube, Google Video, MySpace Video and Blip.tv.

Cornell University Joins Google Library Project

Doug Caverly — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 20:53:18 +0000

Attending Cornell University as an undergrad will cost you around $17,000 per semester. But if you just want to look through the school’s libraries, it’s free – some of their content will become available to everyone, thanks to an arrangement with Google’s Library Project.

“The collection housed at the extraordinary Mann Library will be digitized, making it possible for people everywhere to search and discover books on environmental science, public policy, natural resources, and much more,” announced William Rucklidge, a Google software engineer and Cornell man.

“This is tremendous news, and I hope people around the world will gain as much joy and enrichment from Cornell’s libraries as I did,” Rucklidge continued on the Inside Google Book Search Blog.

I’ll admit that I might gain more joy from another source – according to a release, Mann Library deals in “biological sciences, natural resources, plant, animal and environmental sciences, applied economics, management and public policy, human development, textiles and apparel, nutrition and food science,” while I’m more of a novel and short story sort of fellow – but it’s a nice thought.

Google’s also keeping mindful of lawyers – as with other Library Project developments, none of this will violate copyright law. Only out-of-copyright texts will be made fully available, and for everything else (out of the 500,000 books that might be scanned), would-be readers “will just get the basic background (such as the book’s title and the author’s name), [and] at most a few lines of text related to their search and information about where they can buy or borrow a book.”

Google Library Project Gets Japanese Partner

Doug Caverly — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 17:25:29 +0000

For a while there, Google was gaining partners for its Books Library Project on what seemed like a daily basis. That rush (appears to have) stopped, but now one more school has signed up: Japan’s Keio University.

“Keio University became the latest partner to join Google Books Library Project, and our first library partner in Japan,” states Laura DeBonis, Director of Google’s Book Search Library Partnerships. “Working together, Google and the Keio University Library will digitize at least 120,000 public domain books . . . so that readers around the world can view, browse, read, and even download public domain materials by simply searching online at books.google.co.jp.”

DeBonis then notes that would-be users “can also search these books by typing your search term in Japanese on books.google.com.”

This is all part of Google’s effort “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” – many other recent Library Project partnerships have also involved countries in which English is not the dominant language. (See examples in Belgium, Switzerland, and India, if you’re interested.)

Professor S. Sugiyama, Director of the Keio University Library, also emphasized global matters with his comment on the Inside Google Book Search Blog. “The Google project allows us to make our collections visible worldwide, allowing us to contribute to research and education on a global scale,” he wrote.

Professor Sugiyama continues, “Our university was founded in 1858 by Yukichi Fukuzawa, who was well known for his commitment to bringing information and media forward into the modern age. This makes Keio ideally suited to be the first Japanese library to participate in Google Book Search.”

Hat tip to Bloomberg’s Ari Levy.

Google Library Project Gets University Consortium

Doug Caverly — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:58:55 +0000

Aw, isn’t that nice: the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) is set to cooperate with Google and join the search engine giant’s Library Project. The CIC is composed of 12 major American research universities.

“Google will work with the CIC to digitize select collections across all its libraries, up to 10 million volumes,” reports an official press release.

“Users will be able to explore collections that are global in scope, like Northwestern’s Africana collection or dive deep into the universities’ unique Midwest heritage, including the University of Minnesota’s Scandinavian and forestry collections, Michigan State’s extensive holding in agriculture, Indiana University’s folklore collection, and the history and culture of Chicago collection at the University of Illinois-Chicago.”

It’s getting hard to think of (or imagine) any books that Google hasn’t scanned, and CIC chairman Lawrence Dumas seemed to agree when he gave a statement about the announcement. “This library digitization agreement is one of the largest cooperative actions of its kind in higher education,” Dumas said.

Yet there are still concerns about copyright issues, and neither the CIC nor Google wants anyone to think that laws are being broken. The search engine company went out of its way to note, “For books protected by copyright, users will get basic background (such as the book’s title and the author’s name), at most a few lines of text related to their search, and information about where they can buy or borrow a book.”

With every new partner, Google’s Library Project gains a little more credibility; given its current number of pals, I think that even skeptics must admit the Project has earned a measure of trust. Still, it’s always nice to hear that Google’s thinking about authors’ rights, and it’s always impressive to see the rate at which Google’s endeavor is growing.

Finding Online Sources To Trust

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 01:00:03 +0000

In the United States and the United Kingdom, a couple of librarian-driven resources show just how potent informational sites with vetted content can be for Internet users. Resource Shelf’s Gary Price tells us more.

Before our recent phone chat, I hadn’t heard of either Librarians’ Internet Index or Intute. It’s a great big Internet, and finding new resources like these usually means you need to get a tip from someone like Gary.

Despite his prolific speaking schedule, Gary can’t talk to everyone. Those who know him probably don’t believe that statement, but I have it on good authority from the newlywed Mr. Price that this is the case.

Here’s why he likes LII and Intute. They both have standards for reviewing and cataloging content in a manner that the likes of Jimmy Wales can only fantasize about for Wikipedia. Wales has the advantage of scale, but the vetting process doesn’t match that scope.

LII calls their index "Websites You Can Trust." In the Computers category of Web Design and Management, government sites appear listed with other useful commercial and non-commercial sites. Visitors can drill down by subtopics, and group and sort results for viewing.

Intute offers an intriguing service called the Virtual Training Suite. These free tutorials have been arranged by professions, and are oriented toward helping people within a profession use the Internet more effectively.

It’s always fascinating to see how well resources online can be provided to others. Wikipedia has its value, and in some areas its volunteer contributors have done a very good job. But the necessary corrections for Gary’s Wikipedia entry have not been made (he isn’t a stuntman). A vetted resource wouldn’t have the world believing Ask’s director of online information resources spent some time on the set of The Italian Job.