The recent announcement by Microsoft that it is canceling its Live Search Books and Live Search Academic doesn’t mean that book digitization initiatives are coming to a halt, states Joseph Esposito in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In fact, the decision by Microsoft to leave equipment with institutions, and the digitization momentum already gained, plus other ways to commercialize digitized books, will ensure that book digitization initiatives endure.
Not an earth-shattering insight, but given the magnitude of the Microsoft pull-back, worth noting. And, coming from Joe Esposito, it has extra gravity.
While its unfortunate to hear that Microsoft has abandoned their book digitizing efforts, there are still certainly a lot of projects still charging forward such as with Google and HP’s BookPrep
program.
Posted by Chris | Jun 23, 2008, 12:31 pm