{"id":797,"date":"2006-09-26T18:39:01","date_gmt":"2006-09-26T18:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"\/ifbookblog\/?p=797"},"modified":"2006-09-26T18:39:01","modified_gmt":"2006-09-26T18:39:01","slug":"google_to_scan_spanish_library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/2006\/09\/26\/google_to_scan_spanish_library\/","title":{"rendered":"google to scan spanish library books"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucm.es\/BUCM\/biblioteca\/11979.php\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Modfotoi499.jpg\" img style=\"margin:15px;\" src=\"\/blog\/archives\/Modfotoi499.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"184\" align=\"right\"\/><\/a> The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucm.es\/UCMD.html\">Complutense University<\/a> of Madrid is the latest library to join Google&#8217;s digitization project, offering public domain works from its collection of more than 3 million volumes. Most of the books to be scanned will be in Spanish, as well as other European languages (read more in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/09\/26\/AR2006092600435.html\">Reuters<\/a> , or at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucm.es\/BUCM\/biblioteca\/11979.php\">Biblioteca Complutense<\/a> (en espagnol)).  I also recently came across <a href=\"http:\/\/inhome.rediff.com\/money\/2006\/sep\/20google.htm\">news<\/a> that Google is seeking commercial partnerships with english-language publishers in India.<br \/>\nWhile celebrating the fact that these books will be online (and presumably downloadable in Google&#8217;s shoddy, unsearchable <a href=\"\/blog\/archives\/2006\/08\/googles_window_on_the_public_d.html\">PDF editions<\/a>), we should consider some of the dynamics underlying the migration of the world&#8217;s libraries and publishing houses to the supposedly placeless place we inhabit, the web.<br \/>\nNo doubt, Google&#8217;s scanners are aquiring an increasingly global reach, but digitization is a double-edged process. Think about the scanner. A photographic technology, it captures images and freezes states. What Google is doing is essentially photographing the world&#8217;s libraries and preparing the ultimate slideshow of human knowledge, the sequence and combination of the slides to be determined each time by the queries of each reader.<br \/>\nBut perhaps Google&#8217;s scanners, in their dutifully accurate way, are in effect cloning existing arrangements of knowledge, preserving cultural trade deficits, and reinforcing the <a href=\"\/blog\/archives\/2006\/07\/the_myth_of_universal_knowledg.html\">flow<\/a> of knowledge power &#8212; all things we should be questioning at a time when new technologies have the potential to jigger old equations.<br \/>\nWith Complutense on board, we see a familiar pyramid taking shape. Spanish takes its place below English in the global language hierarchy. Others will soon follow, completing this facsimile of the existing order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Complutense University of Madrid is the latest library to join Google&#8217;s digitization project, offering public domain works from its collection of more than 3 million volumes. Most of the books to be scanned will be in Spanish, as well as other European languages (read more in Reuters , or at the Biblioteca Complutense (en [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[498,755,759,1059,1062,1546,1754],"tags":[2529],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digitization","category-google","category-google_book_search","category-libraries","category-library","category-publishing","category-spain","tag-google-spain-google_book_search-digitization-library-libraries-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}