Stanford University intends to scan millions of books–a worthy project, just so the results will be accessible and affordable for ordinary people, not just the usual suspects in academia and corporate R&D.
But even a well-funded institution like Stanford can do only so much on its own.
So I was pleased that Stanford librarian Michael Keller said the following to The Book and Computer:
We’re talking about gargantuan-sized memories and massively parallel supercomputers to whiz through this stuff. Not many institutions in this country have that kind of capacity. Maybe it will require a national effort to really do this.
Exactly–like TeleRead, which could pool and coordinate distributed efforts from a number of institutions. What’s more, as was just suggested on the eBook Community list, all new books should be submitted in digitized format to the Library of Congress–same thing we’ve been saying for years!
Just please make sure tht the format is XML-based like the proposed Universal Consumer Format.
(B&C article originally found via Bowerbird on a Project Gutenberg list.)
