Online Library Project Hits 1.5 Million Book Milestone

(PC World contributor John Troynousky took a look at today's news from Carnegie Mellon University. Here what he found)

Carnegie Mellon University says it has digitized an astounding 1.5 million books as part of its Universal Digital Library project. The ambitious task, launched in 2002, set out to digitize nothing less than all of humanity's published works. In 1000 years, the plan is, there will be a complete record of all books from the Gutenberg Bible to today's latest romance novel by Danielle Steel.

So far with 1.5 million books digitized, the project estimates it's one percent done with a long way to go.

Books are online today and accessible for free through the Universal Digital Library Web site. However I've experienced major headaches trying to access the online library and have received more browser errors than books. I'm guessing this has to do with the media attention the library is getting today that is translating into more Web traffic than the site can handle.

CMU exceeded its original goal of one million books this past April, and it is showing no signs of slowing down. Over 7000 books are scanned across the globe daily, according to CMU. There is, however, something standing in the project's way. Because of copyright concerns over scanned books the program is playing it safe.

What is available today is mostly books that are in the public domain or are books where the copyright holder has given the UDL permission to make a title available. When and if there is a question about a book's copyright only 15 percent of the book is published online ? however the entire book is scanned and archived.

My review of the UDL revealed that it is playing it safe indeed. Only 15 percent of the public domain book Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, for example is available at UDL.

Project director Michael Shamos explained to to CNET in a story it has to play it safe because the project doesn't want to spend the university's endowment for the initiative on legal fees.

Shamos and the UDL are actually less concerned with short term access to books. Their goal is to preserve books for access hundreds of years from now, according the project's mission statement.

I can only hope my ancestors don't have to deal with today's copyright laws.

CMU efforts compete with similar initiatives by Google (Google Book Search), the Internet Archive (Text Archive), and Project Gutenberg.

Comments

Seems like you're right, the copyright laws themselves don't seem overly cooperative. Perhaps the "1.5" (I realize it was a mistype, the percent was meant to be given) is a direct result of the legal pressures in their way.

Let's face it... this might be an outstanding idea but it's a lost cause. Over the past few years many non-profit groups have sought to digitize books on a global level and failed.

One particular example comes from a site a while back (sorry can't remember the site address) that tried to at least scan all the world's religious texts. This was a very cool idea at the time but halfway through they went bankrupt.

More and more books are being digitized by average joes ? no common website ? just people breaking copyright laws and offering books on their simplistic websites. I?m more inclined the think that this method will do more to preserve books hundreds of years from now.

Or who knows? we might not even be using these boxy things with buttons on it.

Lotech

November 30, 2007

4:30 PM PT