Google Print

I have been following the discussions regarding Google Print (read 'About Google Print') quite closely-- because I think it could be one of the most profitable uses of the internet imaginable. The Google Blog has recently filled in the discussion and addressed the controversy surrounding it:

The Point of Google Print
Why We Believe in Google Print

In Eric Schmidt's article, he outlines the vision of the project

Imagine sitting at your computer and, in less than a second, searching the full text of every book ever written. Imagine an historian being able to instantly find every book that mentions the Battle of Algiers. Imagine a high school student in Bangladesh discovering an out-of-print author held only in a library in Ann Arbor. Imagine one giant electronic card catalog that makes all the world's books discoverable with just a few keystrokes by anyone, anywhere, anytime.

That's the vision behind Google Print, a program we introduced last fall to help users search through the oceans of information contained in the world's books. Recently, some members of the publishing industry who believe this program violates copyright law have been fighting to stop it. We respectfully disagree with their conclusions, on both the meaning of the law and the spirit of a program which, in fact, will enhance the value of each copyright. Here's why.

Google's job is to help people find information. Google Print's job is to make it easier for people to find books. When you do a Google search, your results now include pointers to those books whose contents, stored in the Google Print index, contain your search terms. For many books, these results will, like an ordinary card catalog, contain basic bibliographic information and, at most, a few lines of text where your search terms appear.

I think about this project in terms of rural pastors and church planters who will perhaps some day be able to do quality research and theological reading without having to make two hour drives to theological libraries.

Want to dream with me? Check out the google print version of Darrel Guder's, Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (The Gospel and Our Culture Series)

Comments

[James Paul]

Difficult to wrap my brain around the potential of such a powerful tool. An obvious concern would be how to filter "bad" books/information from your searches. Wouldn't it be amazing to be able to "topic search" a specific author?

I just posted today on another amazing Google accomplishment: Google Earth. My wife and I spent 30 minutes flying over the Maine coastline. My post shows an actual photo of Quest Field in Seattle. Google has my attention!

[Kevin Cawley]

JP-- filtering bad books is the job of the researcher-- and will face us whether we're dealing with an old school card catalog, or a virtual, global library. Learning the right search strings would also be a key on the front end. I'm not a smart "googler" by any stretch.

As for Google Earth-- it is AMAZING. And, I'm glad that I'm a mac user with no access to it, because Katie and I played with it at a friends house for several hours this summer-- I have enough distractions as it is! It is certainly amazing.