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November 22, 2002
Friday
 
 
The digitization of a million books
Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland)  Science & Technology

This news in from my alma mater, CMU, on the NSF Million Books Project:

The NSF's Information Technology Research Program has also awarded a $3 million, three-year grant to the Million Books Project to support digitization of core academic materials, technical reports, government documents and cultural treasures.

I made the prediction to friends in 1980 that by 2010 one would be able to sit on a beach in the South Pacific and access any reference work or data on Earth, whether it be 15th century bills of laiding from the Library of Lisbon or the contents of the Library of Congress.

I think we're still on schedule.

Comments

I hope you are correct.

Paul Marks.


Posted by Paul Marks at November 23, 2002 12:06 AM

I only hope that the next big thing in storage is compatible with the allready stored stuff. I have several dozen backup tapes that I can not read.


Posted by Walter E. Wallis at November 23, 2002 01:17 AM

There is also the guttenberg project


Posted by grant at November 23, 2002 01:51 AM

The Gutenberg Project is marvelous, but is text based and only books old enough to predate the current every lengthening copyright period.

I think this project is about full digitization, something more of value to the archivist. If you want to know more, you'll have to google it, 'cause what you see is what I know.


Posted by Dale Amon at November 23, 2002 03:52 AM