Article: The "Google Five" Describe Progress, Challenges

There are lots of gems in this article. First, how many libraries are not part of the Google Book Search (GBS) project? 25 as of the end of June.

Some article highlights:

• "We're filtering out a lot of works that are not physically up to being scanned" (Harvard)
• "there are many books rejected because of fragile conditions" (Oxford)
• "seven to ten reference questions or interlibrary loan requests a week are generated by use of Google Book Search" (Stanford)
• "Right now, to be frank, I don't find the retrieval in Book Search to be that impressive. There's a long ways to go." (Harvard)
• "We'll define success as getting as much of our collection digitized as we can" (Oxford)

Read the entire article for more gems.

Given the feedback from the Google Five, is Google Book Search a success? Yes. They are seeing positives from their participation. Usage has increased and they have learned more about their collections. They know that it is not yet perfect, but they all seem to have hopes that perfection will come.

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Technorati tag: Digitization