Sunday, April 13, 2008

Beyond the 23 Things - The Open Library

I decided not to number my "things" anymore, since no one will be keeping track and checking them off. Today I explored the Open Library, whose vision is to build an online library that makes all the published works of humankind available to everyone in the world. The Internet Archive plans to do this by digitizing books using high end digital camera technology, and then loading them onto their site. The library went online in July 2007, and there are already over 7 million records in their catalog, and over 230,000 full text books. Of course, there are copyright issues, so most of these items are either in the public domain, or used under a creative commons license. You can take this guided tour of the Open Library to see how it works. The magnitude of this project is staggering! If they include every edition of every book ever published, it will take years and years and years......, even with today's technology.

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