Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Google prepares comprehensive online library in effort to facilitate research

As Google works to post the texts of millions of books online, Northwestern students say they are not sure if the new digital database will change the way they do research.

The company announced in December that it would begin scanning books from five of the world’s largest libraries to create a digital database of searchable text. The database will function like the current Google search engine, allowing researchers to search it using keywords appearing in the books.

Protection laws prevent Google from making the full text of copyrighted books available on-line, but future plans include posting excerpts from copyrighted material to help researchers determine if the book would be useful to them.

Although Google plans to create one of the largest digital databases of books, a few NU students said they are already accustomed to accessing books online.

“There’s the Internet Public Library and the GNU Project, which have been attempting to put books into digital format,” Weinberg senior Anthony Juliano said. “In high school, I used my laptop in class and took notes right in the margin of the book.”

Others students said online books may be useful, but cannot replace good old-fashioned visits to the library.

“There’s no way it could encompass the material our library has and vice versa,” said Jennifer Samuels, a Weinberg senior currently working on her senior thesis in anthropology.”I would view it as more of a complement to library research.”

There are several advantages to creating digital book databases, said David Bishop, NU’s University Librarian.

“In the short term it allows for an easier search through the books,” he said. “Longer-term, when technology improves, researchers won’t have to worry about the actual book and will be able to do their research digitally.”

Google’s database will include books from the New York Public Library, the libraries of Harvard and Stanford universities, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the University of Oxford in England.

“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information,” said Larry Page, one of the company’s co-founders, in a December press release. “We’re excited to be working with libraries to help make this mission a reality.”

There is a possibility that Northwestern will participate in Google’s project, but it would depend on a number of factors, Bishop said.

“My expectation is that once Google has finished with the larger libraries they will look to other libraries to fill in the gaps of books that weren’t there,” he said. “We would have to know the exact arrangement other libraries have before we could commit to the project.”

NU’s library has also just purchased a machine that will allow it to create its own digital database of books, Bishop said.

Besides facilitating research, a digital library would help the university preserve its books, he said.

“We’re focusing on so-called ‘brittle books’,” Bishop said. “The machine will be able to scan the books at a rate of about a thousand pages per hour. We will then send the file to a printer who will create a new book from that file.”

That way, he said, the library would have a good condition hard copy as well as a searchable digitized version of every book it scans.

“People will really have a choice,” he said.

Reach Cara Walsh at [email protected].

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Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881
Google prepares comprehensive online library in effort to facilitate research