© 2005 Nature Publishing Group

NEWS FEATURE NATURE|Vol 438|1 December 2005

550

Vishwas Chavan travels a lot. Aninformatician based at theNational Chemical Laboratoryin Pune, India, he collects

data on what types of animal livewhere in India to enter into a biodi-versity database. Yet the specimenshe hunts for have neither fur nor feathers, but yellowing pagesand ageing dustjackets.

Much of the informationChavan seeks is in old, out-of-print tomes that are scat-tered around the world;about 2,500 of the 7,000books he has unearthedwere written in the firsthalf of the nineteenth century. To find them,Chavan has spent yearstrailing around libraries.He dreams of the daywhen books such as theseare scanned and made availableas digital files on the Internet.

Chavan and other digitization visionariespaint a future in which books no longer gatherdust on shelves, but exist as interconnectednodes in a vast web of stored literature, allaccessible at the click of a mouse. So instead ofhunting for specific books, scholars couldsearch for specific information, customizingsearches to suit their needs.

A few years ago, Chavan’s dream seemed little more than a castle in the air. True, a num-ber of mostly volunteer-driven or publiclyfunded projects had been scanning books andmaking them freely available on the Internet.But most efforts were limited.

In December 2004, the Internet search-engine company Google announced plans tochange that. It said it would scan millions ofbooks from five major libraries: the univer-sity libraries of Oxford, Harvard, Stanfordand Michigan, and the New York PublicLibrary. The announcement energized otherorganizations in the United States and inEurope, which soon unveiled similar plans to

scan and catalogue millions of books. The move to digitize books is set to trans-

form the worlds of publishers, librarians,authors, readers and researchers. Obscure spe-cialist titles could find new readerships; librar-ians and information specialists will have todevelop tools to catalogue and navigate thislabyrinth of data; and authors and publishersmay soon have to start thinking in digitaldimensions, just as website designers and writers already do.

Bloody revolutionBut revolutions are rarely bloodless and thisone could soon get ugly. In the United Statesauthors and publishers are squaring up againstGoogle for a legal fight over copyright. Opin-ion is divided over whether the scanning pro-jects being implemented by companies such asGoogle and Amazon (see graphic opposite)will hand control of the world’s literature toprivate enterprise — and, if so, what this couldmean. And with several independent scanningprojects under way, it is still not clear howmuch of the information will be freely avail-

able, or where and how it can all be coordi-nated and accessed.

The idea to digitize books and make themavailable online has been around since theInternet’s inception in the early 1970s. Whenthe US Declaration of Independence wastyped in and sent to everyone on a computernetwork on the night of 4 July 1971, it markedthe birth of Project Gutenberg, the first book-digitization venture.

Since then, the project’s 20,000 volunteershave scanned or typed in about 50,000 out-of-copyright books, says its founder MichaelHart, who works in the basement of his homein Urbana, Illinois, and, like the project’s volunteers, for free.

Projects such as this are driven by the ideal-istic desire to make knowledge and literaturefreely accessible to all, but also by the benefitsof having book collections easily searchable.“Being able to find it online is pretty much thesame as having it online,” says David Wein-berger of the Berkman Center for Internetand Society at Harvard Law School in Cam-bridge, Massachusetts.

C. D

ARK

IN

THE REAL DEATH OF PRINTDespite clashes with publishers overcopyright, Google’s plan to make millions ofbooks available online is turning the tide forefforts to digitize the world’s literature.Andreas von Bubnoff tracks the demise ofthe printed page.

1.12 News Feat 3 E-Books MH 29/11/05 11:38 AM Page 550

Nature Publishing Group© 2005

© 2005 Nature Publishing Group

www.opencontentalliance.org

Funded to scan 170,000 books in many

languages

NATURE|Vol 438|1 December 2005 NEWS FEATURE

551

Assets such as searchability have promptedthe National Science Foundation (NSF) inArlington, Virginia, to get involved in anopen-access enterprise called the MillionBook Project. This is an international scan-ning effort with many participants, includingCarnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania.

Since the project began in 2002, about600,000 out-of-copyright books have beenscanned, although only about half of them arecurrently available online (see graphic). Thescanning takes place in India and China, withbooks being shipped there temporarily fromlibraries around the world.

Made to fitSearchability is also the main driving forcebehind commercial plans to scan books,including texts whose copyright has yet toexpire. For example, if their products havebeen digitized, online booksellers can allowcustomers to search within books and browsea few pages before deciding to buy. In theUnited States, with the publisher’s permission,Amazon puts searchable digital data frommostly copyrighted books online. Amazonsays that several hundred thousand books arecurrently available for searching.

Amazon also offers the option of purchasinge-books and e-documents on its website, whichcan be viewed after downloading them to aportable reading device (see ‘Will flexiblescreens be the end of paperbacks?’). The com-pany expects these services to drive additionalsales. Its ‘search inside the book’ featureincreases sales by 8%, the company says. Scien-tific publishers, such as the US National Acad-emies Press also see increased print sales whenthey allow their books to be viewed online.

But Google doesn’t mention money in itsannouncement that it plans to make the con-tents of millions of copyrighted books search-able as part of its Google Book Search project. Itsspokesman, Nate Tyler, says Google’s motivationis to include literature that is currently onlyavailable offline in its mission to make informa-tion universally accessible. But the possibilitythat the company could gain financially fromthe move has raised hackles among US authorsand publishing organizations.

In the autumn of this year, the AuthorsGuild and the Association of American Pub-lishers filed a lawsuit against Google for copy-right infringement. They complained thatGoogle hadn’t asked them for permission toscan copyrighted books.

Google has obtained the go-ahead from pub-lishers to include some copyrighted works aspart of its Book Search project, but not all. Itargues that it does not need to seek permissionfor every book, because what it plans to do ispermissible according to the ‘fair use’ exceptionof US copyright law. This allows copying foruses such as teaching, scholarship or research.

Google will, for example, not make the fulltext available, but only show ‘snippets’ of textaround the search results if a book is still copy-righted. The company says that people aremore likely to buy or borrow a book if they cansearch it this way, adding that the snippets aresimilar to the card catalogues found in

libraries. But Paul Aiken of the Authors Guildin New York City argues that the act of scan-ning the works is copyright infringement nomatter how the texts are used.

The outcome of the lawsuit will depend onthe courts’ decisions over how the concept offair use applies in the age of digital books andthe Internet. Meanwhile, the rest of the scan-ning world is watching from the sidelines, andbeing careful to scan only books that are out ofcopyright, or to obtain the publisher’s permis-sion before scanning anything.

Google’s plan has shaken up the digital-book world in other ways too. For one thing,many believe that its size and resources meanGoogle can pull of this feat — so large-scalerepositories of digital books seem a morerealistic and immediate prospect than everbefore. Google has also galvanized its competi-tors, both public and private (see graphic) toredouble their efforts, and has placed a question mark over the future of libraries and librarians.

“I think Google is in a class by itself becauseof the quantity of money and the level of cen-tralization,” says Daniel Greenstein, librarian of the California Digital Library in Oakland, California. “Google has paved the way, createdthe appetite for this kind of activity, and anxi-ety on the part of libraries and publishers.”

Out with the oldBut Michael Gorman, president of the Ameri-can Library Association, says he is not worriedthat libraries could become obsolete. As well asproviding access to books, they serve as a placefor people to meet and study, he says. Andlibrarians’ expertise in information manage-ment will still be needed. “We are not worriedabout our own jobs,” agrees Dennis Dillon,

“Google is in a class by itselfbecause of the quantity of money

and the level of centralization.” — Daniel Greenstein

C. D

ARK

IN/N

. SPE

NC

ER

1.12 News Feat 3 E-Books MH 29/11/05 11:38 AM Page 551

Nature Publishing Group© 2005

© 2005 Nature Publishing Group

NEWS FEATURE NATURE|Vol 438|1 December 2005

552

associate director of the research services divi-sion of the University of Texas libraries atAustin. “The job is changing, which makes iteven more fulfilling than it was before.”

But Gorman is worried that over-relianceon digital texts could change the way peopleread — and not for the better. He calls it the“atomization of knowledge”. Google searchesretrieve snippets and Gorman worries thatpeople who confine their reading to theseshort paragraphs could miss out on the deeperunderstanding that can be conveyed by longer,narrative prose. Dillon agrees that people usee-books in the same way that they use webpages: dipping in and out of the content.

Best of both worldsHaving a mix of both e-books and real bookscould be the answer. A mix would certainlyhelp solve that perennial headache for libraries— the lack of shelf space and cost of keepingphysical books. Ensuring that some librariesalways keep a physical copy of a particularwork means that they will be available throughinter-library loans for readers needing a realbook, adds Dillon.

Some of them are already dispensing withhard copies. The University of Texas at Austin,for example has about 10,000 copyrightedbooks and 300,000 out-of-copyright worksthat are available only as e-books, says Dillon.

Another person to be energized, but alsoalarmed, by Google’s move is Brewster Kahle,

founder of the Internet Archive, a non-profitorganization in San Francisco that archivesweb pages and other digital files. AlthoughGoogle has never indicated that it plans toclaim ownership over its digitized material orcharge for search access, Kahle doesn’t want toleave digital books entirely in the hands of pri-vate enterprise.

That’s why, in October, he announced theformation of the Open Content Alliance(OCA). This aims to build a permanent

archive of multilingual digitized text and mul-timedia content, which, as far as possible, willbe freely accessible.

Like the Million Book Project, the OCA willscan out-of-print books; the first few arealready available online. The alliance hopes torival Google’s project in terms of scale; amongthe groups helping to finance its scanningefforts are Yahoo and Microsoft. Somelibraries who were reluctant to join the MillionBook Project for logistical reasons have signedup to the OCA. “We did consider the MillionBook Project, but we were hesitant because wewanted to avoid shipping overseas,” says Tom

Garnett, assistant director for Digital Librariesand Information Systems at the SmithsonianInstitution Libraries in Washington DC, a con-tributor to the OCA.

For taxonomists such as Chavan, the OCAis perhaps the most interesting scanning pro-ject so far. Eight museums including the Nat-ural History Museum in London have formedthe Biodiversity Heritage Library Project,which will collaborate with the OCA to scanabout one million volumes of biodiversity lit-erature, much of it out of copyright.

But Matthias Ulmer, a German publisherwho helped launch an e-book initiative by theGerman Publishers and Booksellers Associa-tion, thinks that scanning old books is “a com-plete waste of money”. “Science is movingincredibly fast, even in the field of taxonomy,”says Ulmer. Earlier this year, his associationannounced an initiative whereby some 100German publishers are considering digitizingabout 100,000 newly published books by 2006.Publishers will take their own digital raw dataand place them on a network of their ownservers. Scientists and others will then be ableto access the books for a fee.

With 2005 seeing the birth of so many digi-tization projects, it might not be long beforeChavan can realize his dream of hunting for new specimens from the comfort of his armchair. ■

Andreas von Bubnoff is an intern in Nature’sWashington office.

“It’s nice. It’s the size of apaperback book. It’s very light — Iactually forgot I had it in my bag.”

The future of reading, accordingto Theresa Horner, director of e-book operations for the publisherHarper Collins, lies in neatelectronic devices such as theSony Librie she totes in herhandbag. Although somebookworms might baulk at thethought of reading a novel on ascreen, it might not be long beforeportable electronic booksrevolutionize the book world in thesame way that Apple’s iPodchanged the music scene.

Almost any device can be used toread an e-book. Nick Bogaty,executive director of theInternational Digital PublishingForum (formerly the Open e-BookForum) in New York thinks that the“vast majority” of people reading e-books now are doing so on theirPDAs or smartphones. The small,handheld devices that people use toorganize their lives can act as usefulstores for reference books, or holdnovels that while away a longcommute. Fans of this approach saythey stop noticing the screen size

when gripped by a good plot.There are also devices that

attempt to recreate a more familiarreading experience. Garth Conboy,president of eBook Technologies,recounts how his company’sdevices, which are like small tablet-PCs with simple page-turningbuttons, are supplied to about15,000 students at a militarycollege loaded with their coursematerial. This saves the college

money in printing, and has theadvantages of online material.

But the device that afficionadosdrool over is the Sony Librie.Launched in Japan in April last year,it is similar in size, shape andweight to a book, and is the firstdevice to have a paper-like display.

The display uses technologydeveloped by E Ink in Cambridge,Massachusetts, and works byreflecting light, rather than emitting

light like an LCD or LED screen.The pixels are microcapsulescontaining particles of black andwhite ink with opposite charge. Anelectric field pushes one or othercolour to the surface, producing aprint-like effect. The device onlygobbles energy when the display isrefreshed. So the lifetime ofbatteries in such an e-papersystem is measured in page-turns,rather than hours.

And the future? It’s likely to beflexible. In September, Philipsunveiled the first workingprototype of an e-reader with arollable display, aimed not just ate-books, but also at news readingand Internet browsing. In the‘Concept Readius’ a grey-scale

screen measuring about 13centimetres wide, again using E Ink technology, curls up inside aslimline packet measuring10�6�2 cm.

It might be worth waiting for. “We plan to start our production by the end of 2006, so I anticipateproducts coming into the market inearly 2007,” says Hans Driessen, aspokesman for Philips.Jenny Hogan

“Science is moving incredibly fast,and scanning old books is acomplete waste of money.”

— Matthias Ulmer

Will flexible screens be the end of paperbacks?

S. K

AM

BAYA

SHI/

AP

1.12 News Feat 3 E-Books MH 29/11/05 11:38 AM Page 552

Nature Publishing Group© 2005