Long Google Digitization Project Article

Technology Review has the longest article I've seen so far on the Google digitization project. But then I haven't seen that much. On the privatization of human literacy, the future of libraries, the three doors of Brewster Kahle, putting pressure on the DMCA and the digitization process:

“We put a whole shelfful of books onto a cart, keeping the order intact. We check them out by waving them under a bar code reader. Overnight, software takes all the bar codes, extracts machine-readable records from the university’s electronic catalogue, and sends the records to Google, so they can match them with the books. Then we move the cart into Google’s operations room.”

This room will contain multiple workstations so that several books can be digitized in parallel. Google is designing the machines to minimize the impact on books [...] “They scan the books in order and return the cart to us,” he continues. “We check them back in and mark the records to show they’ve been scanned. Finally, the digital files are shipped in a raw format to a Google data center and processed to produce something you could use."