The Hindu News Update Service
News Update Service
Thursday, July 2, 2009 : 1240 Hrs
Sci. & Tech.
The library that never closes
The internet's relationship with books, it is fair to say, has been a
tumultuous one. Ever since the digital revolution started changing
ourrelationship
with information, the printed word - one of the most successful technologies in
history - has been on the back foot.
Amazon has altered the face of the industry twice - first in the 1990s by
changing the way books are sold and then, more recently, the way theyare
consumed,
with its Kindle electronic book reader. Google has caused its own earthquake in
the print world with its Book Search scheme - a plan tosuck the text of
millions of books into its search engine that has raised the hackles of
publishers and authors alike.
Talk to workers at either of these technology companies and there is a feeling
of technological inevitability: that the printed book is a steppingstone
in the evolution of information, and now lies ready to be devoured by its
hi-tech successors.
Not everybody thinks that way, however, including the Open Library
(openlibrary.org) - a project with an audacious goal that it hopes canbring the
web and
books closer together.
The scheme is to create a single page on the web for every book that has ever
been published; an enormous, searchable catalogue of information aboutmillions
of books. It is still in beta, but already more than 23m books are in its
system, drawing information from 19 major libraries and linking tothe text of
more than 1m out-of-copyright titles.
That is admirable work for just a handful of staff at the library, an arm of
the non-profit Internet Archive (which itself has the vast objectiveof trying
to keep a historical record of the web for future generations).
But with information about books already being processed by hugely popular
websites such as Google and Amazon, the question remains - why bother?George
Oates, the newly installed project leader, says it's a way to preserve book
records for history and, crucially, make the informationusable by anybody.
"It's remarkably difficult to unify this information," she says, when we meet
at the Internet Archive building in San Francisco's leafy Presidiopark, a
former military outpost that is, rather aptly, historically preserved. "As much
as the libraries attempt to have similar standards andorders, there are
always gotchas and nooks and crannies that have to be worked out."
More than simply bringing together cold lists of books from isolated libraries,
however, she also believes OL can breathe life into books bygrabbing information
from around the internet.
"Imagine books more as a networked object, rather than a single entity," she
suggests. "We start with this kernel and then we see what we can pileonto it
... it's a locus for all the information about a book that's on the wider web."
In a way, it's like a Wikipedia for printed material (indeed, it runs on wiki
software, allowing anyone to add their own notes on different books oreditions).
And Oates, who took over the project this year, is hoping to turn it from a
skilful attempt to ingest vast amounts of data intosomething that is useful
to ordinary people.
The site can potentially pull information from all over the web - retailers,
reviews, book clubs, forums and enthusiast sites - as well asfrom social
networks
that already exist for bibliophiles, such as LibraryThing or GoodReads.
"It is about sharing as openly as possible - and that's really liberating ...
we're almost a non-threat to the rest of the web, becausewe're not keeping
the property."
Oates knows a thing or two about sharing objects online. For the past few
years, the Australian was one of the leading lights at the popular photowebsite
Flickr - spending four years as lead designer, before moving to a role that
included projects such as the Commons: a scheme to use Flickr asa window on
publicly held photography collections.
The lessons from her previous work are carrying through to the project in
obvious ways - a redesign is being mooted to make more palatable tothose who
don't
have a degree in library science. But she is also hoping to introduce some of
sense of serendipity or exploration to the records.
"Right now it's about search and retrieve, and there's no sense of browsing or
skipping around," she says. "In the future we can start to doqueries like
'show me all the popular subjects that were written about in 1934'. You can
start to trend that over time, look at peaks and troughs inareas of interest.
The data's all there, but it's about making connections that are inferred by
the data itself - I'm really excited by that."Propagating that idea could
be made more difficult by Google, which last week revamped its book search to
make it a more sleek and socialexperience. Oates says she doesn't see that
in adversarial terms, however.
"The book search on Google is awesome - they've thrown a shitload of computing
power at it, and you can see books that mention things, websitesthat mention
those books and books on a map. It's useful, but it's really clinical." Oates
won't say any more about Google, but her colleagues areless reticent. Peter
Brantley, the archive's director of access, has been a vocal critic of the
company's plans - even going as far as calling Google'sattempt to gain exemption
against future copyright claims as "disgusting".
There is certainly a tension between the two schemes, partially because their
intentions are so similar while their approaches are so different.But, while
Google has the backing of many publishers, who see the chance to make some
extra cash in the deal, one crucial ally for Open Library may bethe academic
world.
If the scheme gives researchers and students the chance to use Open Library in
their work - referring to an OL page as a citation source, orbuilding a
bibliography
using its tools - they could get a core audience that spreads the concept.
Plus, of course, the idea is that Open Librarywill remain just that - open -
for ever. "The longevity of the work that we're doing is a bit of a culture
shock, and a really curious solution toprovide," she says. "How do we write
stuff to disk that's going to be retrievable in 1,000 years? This is a very new
problem for my brain - notthat the systems I've worked on before would
go up in smoke, but this is designed explicitly not to."
Still, regardless of long-term vision, the scheme's success is not clear cut.
Despite its meek appearance, the library world is big business - andit is
not clear that big libraries are particularly keen on giving away the keys to
anyone just yet. Organisations such as the British Library havetheir own
projects to archive their vast collections for the web.
Still, Open Library is hoping that it can succeed by being a neutral space,
without agendas or commercial imperatives.
"I want it to be a place where people can love books and contribute information
about books," Oates says. Perhaps, in the face of the onslaughtof digital
information, the printed word has found a new way to evolve.
To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with
the subject unsubscribe.
To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please
visit the list home page at
http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
