A Library at Your Fingertips

A few years ago, at the height of the dotcom boom, it was widely assumed that a publishing revolution, in which the printed word would be supplanted by the computer screen, was just around the corner. It wasn’t: for many, there is still little to match the joy of cracking the spine of a good book and settling down for an hour or two of reading. A recent flurry of activity by big technology companies – including Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo! – suggests that the dream of bringing books online is still very much alive. The digitising of thousands of volumes of print is not without controversy. On Thursday, November 3, Google, the world’s most popular search engine, posted a first instalment of books on Google Print, an initiative first mooted a year ago. This collaborative effort between Google and several of the world’s leading research libraries aims to make many thousands of books available to be searched and read online free of charge. Although the books included so far are not covered by copyright, the plan has attracted the ire of publishers. Five large book firms are suing Google for violating copyright on material that it has scanned and, although out of print, is still protected by law. Google has said that it will only publish short extracts from material under copyright unless given express permission to publish more, but publishers are unconvinced. Ironically, many publishers are collaborating with Google on a separate venture, Google Print Publisher, which aims to give readers an online taste of books that are commercially available. The searchable…