An endless shelf for library books
- From: J Flenner <varney@[redacted]>
- Subject: An endless shelf for library books
- Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 09:20:54 EST
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/03/17/an_endless_shelf_for_library_books/
March 17, 2006 | Boston Globe
An endless shelf for library books
By Elaine Kamarck
GRAY-HAIRED and slightly stooped, professor Sidney Verba doesn't look
like a T-shirted guru of the computer age. But his position as head of
Harvard's libraries has put him in just that spot. Along with his
counterparts at Stanford, Oxford, the University of Michigan, and the
New York Public Library, Verba is part of the Google Library Project.
The project, when completed, will place millions of volumes of books,
among them many very old and irreplaceable volumes, on the Internet to
be searched by Google's powerful search engines. When complete, the
process will open up millions of lost texts to new generations.
The value of the project to the ''mega libraries" like Harvard's is
enormous. Before Google came along, Verba had looked into digitizing the
Harvard library. It was an obvious way to protect the 15 million volumes
against normal wear and tear and against the possibility of fire or
other destruction.
But Verba came up against two big problems: The cost was enormous, and
the technology was such that it threatened to damage the precious old
works it was seeking to preserve.
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