Like most of its projects, Google has lost interest in Google Books and has not bothered to maintain it, much less continue developing it. This has been going for more than a decade now. NGram search for example stopped adding new texts to the index in 2008.
Google fought and won a court case to put 25 million more orphan books which it had already scanned, out of print and largely unavailable, into Google Books. But decided it wouldn't bother. Because out of print books cannot be monetized, it would seem an
At least they haven't pulled the plug on it entirely.
AFAIK Alphabet has put the "good" version in universities where the library admin does all the heavy lifting of scanning in books and such. That was part of the suit settlement. The public doesn't get to access researchers have.
If I were the Fine Author, I'd head over to one of the unis that signed up with Google and use it there before declaring any sort of hard result.
My local University Library even has banks of automatic book scanners in case somebody wants to add a book from the shelves to the digital collection. Instead of the old "photocopy the whole text" strategy that was in common use in the past.
Unfortunately, it is only available to staff and students; I have a library card that lets me check out books, but I don't have access to the digital copies or the book scanners.
Wait - tell me more. Have any links to this kind of service?
I know of an old family history book that was put through a vanity publisher. I've been trying to track down a copy for a decade. Amazon says it exists, about the only online presence. One of these days I'll get my hands on a copy, and once I do, I want to get it online for future generations. The author is a direct descendant of mine, and I know that nobody has or cares about the rights. It's public domain now.
Google Books Has Been Deteriorating For Years (Score:5, Interesting)
Like most of its projects, Google has lost interest in Google Books and has not bothered to maintain it, much less continue developing it. This has been going for more than a decade now. NGram search for example stopped adding new texts to the index in 2008.
Google fought and won a court case to put 25 million more orphan books which it had already scanned, out of print and largely unavailable, into Google Books. But decided it wouldn't bother. Because out of print books cannot be monetized, it would seem an
Re: (Score:4, Interesting)
At least they haven't pulled the plug on it entirely.
AFAIK Alphabet has put the "good" version in universities where the library admin does all the heavy lifting of scanning in books and such. That was part of the suit settlement. The public doesn't get to access researchers have.
If I were the Fine Author, I'd head over to one of the unis that signed up with Google and use it there before declaring any sort of hard result.
Re:Google Books Has Been Deteriorating For Years (Score:3)
My local University Library even has banks of automatic book scanners in case somebody wants to add a book from the shelves to the digital collection. Instead of the old "photocopy the whole text" strategy that was in common use in the past.
Unfortunately, it is only available to staff and students; I have a library card that lets me check out books, but I don't have access to the digital copies or the book scanners.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait - tell me more. Have any links to this kind of service?
I know of an old family history book that was put through a vanity publisher. I've been trying to track down a copy for a decade. Amazon says it exists, about the only online presence. One of these days I'll get my hands on a copy, and once I do, I want to get it online for future generations. The author is a direct descendant of mine, and I know that nobody has or cares about the rights. It's public domain now .
The question then is, what's the
Re: (Score:2)
*direct ancestor. Great grandpa was not a time traveler, best I can tell.
Re: (Score:2)
The best way for your situation is to just scan the pages by hand, using a consumer scanning tool, and then upload it to archive.org for preservation.