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When I was a teenager, I was so amazed whenever I read Prisma (the only Indonesia’s quality journal published by LP3ES – periodical publication on social science) and Ulumul Quran (similar kind of publication on religion and philosophy published by LSAF – Lembaga Studi Agama dan Filsafat). What amazed me was not only the quality of the piece written, but also the amount of citation taken from foreign books and journals.
I thought then that it’s almost unlikely to get access to those rare foreign books unless or until you study in prominent Indonesia’s universities like UGM / UI / UIN Jakarta or study abroad. I chose the second choice.
Now, Google make it possible with its scanning program for everyone everywhere who has an internet access to what I used to dream about.
Google has been scanning books to make them available online for a while now. The practice has landed Google in hot water with both the government and authors who were not originally approached for permission to scan the works.
Google made a settlement with author groups in the U.S. that allowed it to continue scanning books and make them available online. Regulators in Europe are now eyeing the Google scanning program while Google defends itself by saying that the scanning of books makes finding information online a more democratic process.
September 9, 2009 at 3:51 am
It appears that whoever wrote this post has not really used the Google book site itself.
Book scanning is a mine field due to intellectual property and copyright concerns. Google partially scans most of the books they make available- unless the books exist in the public domain. Legal eligibility for public domain status in a country like the United States means some seventy-five years aafter the author’s death!
As far as academic papers are concerned, citations for other papers as found in trade and academic journals are as common as books, and journals are not inventoried in Google books. Respected journals can only reliably be accessed on the internet through university affiliation (one must be a university student or faculty/administration member), or else pay privately for a subscription.
This happy announcement about Google books- however optimistic and caught up in the rush of momentary happiness- is misleading and needs clarification.
The internet is still far from being a true library.
September 9, 2009 at 9:35 am
I guess so. I mean, it’s too good to be true,seriously! Getting a full access like a real library via the Internet looks like a castle in the cloud, at least for now. I used to get deceived, too. I signed up for some so-called online libraries which offer myriads collections of books,journals and resources. But then I learned I had to purchase some membership fee or (like you said) university affiliation.
Speaking of copyrights and risks of illegal copying, Indonesians never take it seriously,do they?
But the idea of scanning books is great, it saves more trees as we don’t have to print them out on sheets of paper. Green idea!
September 9, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Well, when the settlement between Google and the authors has been reached and all good books get digitized, it may be not free, but two things are certain. One, it’ll be cheaper, a lot cheaper (see Amazon’s kindle). Two, it’ll be accessible for anyone with internet connection and willing to buy books wherever one is.
September 10, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Mmmm… Not free, but it is a great break trough
September 17, 2009 at 12:35 am
[...] Inc. is already behind a major project to digitize books and put them online, mostly by scanning pages and using optical character recognition, or OCR, to [...]