The Director of the University Library at Harvard, Robert Darnton, squares off against the travesty of Google Books, and how it promotes feeling-less empty books:
"It is important to get the feel of a book—the texture of its paper, the quality of its printing, the nature of its binding."Meanwhile, as Google attempts to scan 15 or so MILLION books it simply isn't enough... as there are 500+ million books in the research libraries, and nearly 300k+ more a year. As though we should just give up and leave the 6 copies of his new favorite book to rot on the shelves... because digital books are guaranteed to be in an out-of-date format in a few years (and its so very difficult to change digital formats...)
"Once we believed that microfilm would solve the problem of preserving texts. Now we know better."
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