"Organizing the world's information": this is Google's mission, according to its founders. Google does not risk the obsolescence of its 'products', because it is organized around an idea rather than a specific service. And in the pursuit of this idea, for some years now he has been proposing – and the proposals were followed by the facts – to digitize all the books in the world so as to make them available to anyone through search engines. All the books? Not exactly. In order not to disturb copyrights, digitization with free access is limited to books that are no longer protected. Yesterday evening Google and the British Library announced the launch of a project (which will last three years) to digitize 250 books from the immense collection. They will be available at www.bl.uk and books.google.co.uk. The works were written between 1700 and 1870, and range from Spanish inventor Narciso Monturiol's drawings of a motorized submarine (“A Scheme for Underwater Seafaring: the Ichthyneus or Fish-Boat”) to the story (1775) of a hippopotamus stuffed animal owned by the Prince of Orange. The cost of the initiative will be borne by Google, which has launched similar initiatives with universities and libraries in America (Stanford and Harvard Universities) as well as in the Netherlands, Austria and Italy.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/breakingnews/243155/british-library-google-put-thousands-of-books-online
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/20/british-library-google-digitisation-hippos
