Google has launched Google Print, an ambitious project to index printed information alongside digital information. "Google's mission is to provide access to all the world's information and make it universally useful and accessible. It turns out that not all the world's information is already on the Internet, so Google has been experimenting with a number of publishers to test their content online." It now indexes some Google-hosted portions of some printed books. If you search on a string that appears in the indexed portion of the book, then among the hits listed on the results page there will be a Google-produced page about the book (see sample), offering a citation, a summary from the jacket, and links to online vendors. Google also provides a contact form for publishers and authors interested in participating in the program. (PS: This is a modest start to an ambitious program. It doesn't yet compare with Amazon's Search Inside the Book service. For example, it does not index full text and does not return text passages containing search strings. But Google has revealed that it wants to index print information --or more extravagantly, all print information-- and Google doesn't blow smoke. Let's see what unfolds.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/19/2003 08:47:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
