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Hamlet53 · 05-12-2010, 01:23 PM

I don't see how it can possibly be a bad thing to have another source of e-books. Especially if they are made available in format(s) not tied to any particular device.

Yes, there versions of the OCR output of scanned public domain books are terrible, but they are free so it is hard to get too worked up about that. What I like is that in addition to the OCR output version they always provide the original scan, in PDF format. I wish P.G. did this given the number of errors that often remain in the various text versions released by P.G.

My big hopes for Google Books is that a lot of 'orphan' titles, those written to late to be in public domain, but not current enough that any publisher thinks it worthwhile to go to the expense releasing these titles, will at least become available on Google in some form of text output as well as the PDF.

05-12-2010, 01:23 PM	#10
Hamlet53 Nameless Being	I don't see how it can possibly be a bad thing to have another source of e-books. Especially if they are made available in format(s) not tied to any particular device. Yes, there versions of the OCR output of scanned public domain books are terrible, but they are free so it is hard to get too worked up about that. What I like is that in addition to the OCR output version they always provide the original scan, in PDF format. I wish P.G. did this given the number of errors that often remain in the various text versions released by P.G. My big hopes for Google Books is that a lot of 'orphan' titles, those written to late to be in public domain, but not current enough that any publisher thinks it worthwhile to go to the expense releasing these titles, will at least become available on Google in some form of text output as well as the PDF.