Is Google the Gutenberg of Our Age?

[Dover]

Google Internet Library Called A Revolution


Dec. 16, 2004 — Moves by Internet search giant Google to create a global virtual library could signal a communications revolution on a par with Johann Gutenberg and the invention of moveable type in the 15th century.

"We've been talking about it here in those kind of terms," said John Wilkin, associate librarian at Michigan University.

Michigan and four more of the world's top libraries — Harvard, Stanford, New York Public Library and the Bodleian in Oxford, England — announced this week a deal with Google to digitize millions of their books and make them freely available online.

"This just changes the landscape so completely," Wilkin said. "The research library, which was not very accessible before, will be available to everybody. The focus will start to shift to electronic space for all of our scholarly communications."

Michigan and Stanford are planning to digitize their entire library collections — totalling some 15 million books — while the Bodleian is offering around one million books published before 1900..cont'd

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20041213/library.html

[Rockerdem]

1. Probably important, but not as much as the invention of . . .

. . . the "cut" and "paste" functions in word processing programs. Those were monumental leaps in writing/publishing history. The equivalent of a 200-foot high jump in the Olympics finals.

[TikiGirl]

2. LoL

That is probably the most hilarious thing I have herd about Google to date....Absoulutly brilliant.