MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Google scanning 27'000 books per day

Steven Lyle Jordan · 03-23-2007, 07:58 AM

I'm guessing that, because they have college libraries (and therefore probably students) doing the work, the cost to Google must be minimal. Still, if one library is digitizing 3,000 books a day, even with the latest and fastest scanning equipment (the slowest part of the process), that has to be multiple workstations and quite a number of students working on that project!

The article suggests they are simply making images of each page ("fingers are visible in the corners of many pages on books.google.com"), and that's a shame. If they're not being text-reco'd, they're missing a great opportunity.

In re-reading the article, I realize again they should have given that story to someone who actually knows something about e-books. In comparing e-books to CDs, the author says "The simplest difference is that transferring one's old music CDs onto iPods is easy, whereas transferring one's old books onto an e-book is impossible."

Really?

03-23-2007, 07:58 AM	#4
Steven Lyle Jordan Grand Sorcerer Posts: 8,478 Karma: 5171130 Join Date: Jan 2006 Device: none	I'm guessing that, because they have college libraries (and therefore probably students) doing the work, the cost to Google must be minimal. Still, if one library is digitizing 3,000 books a day, even with the latest and fastest scanning equipment (the slowest part of the process), that has to be multiple workstations and quite a number of students working on that project! The article suggests they are simply making images of each page ("fingers are visible in the corners of many pages on books.google.com"), and that's a shame. If they're not being text-reco'd, they're missing a great opportunity. In re-reading the article, I realize again they should have given that story to someone who actually knows something about e-books. In comparing e-books to CDs, the author says "The simplest difference is that transferring one's old music CDs onto iPods is easy, whereas transferring one's old books onto an e-book is impossible." Really? Last edited by Steven Lyle Jordan; 03-23-2007 at 08:07 AM.