# Google adding major libraries to database

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2004-12-14T16:46:13Z


New York TimesGoogle Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database

By JOHN MARKOFF and EDWARD WYATT

Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, plans to announce an agreement today with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web.

It may be only a step on a long road toward the long-predicted global virtual library. But the collaboration of Google and research institutions that also include Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library is a major stride in an ambitious Internet effort by various parties. The goal is to expand the Web beyond its current valuable, if eclectic, body of material and create a digital card catalog and searchable library for the world's books, scholarly papers and special collections. MuninnHarvard Pilot Project with Google

I just got a university-wide email regarding a pilot project that Harvard is starting with Google. It looks like Google will also be joining with other universities in this project, which will begin the work of digitizing, and in the case of public domain works providing public access to, the contents of the Harvard library system.Sounds good. Now if only we can figure out a way to get more of the books, particularly those which are out of print, into the public domain.





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#### Categories

Books, Intellectual Property, Search
