On Demand Digital Books
A new partnership between Kirtas Technologies and the University of Pennsylvania Libraries allows users to request and purchase a digitized version of nearly any out-of-copyright book from the Penn Library collection.
What makes this initiative unique is that the books can be offered for sale before they are ever digitized, so there is no up-front printing, production or storage cost.
Indeed, that is interesting. Here’s how they say it works.
The desired book will be pulled from Penn’s shelves, digitized, processed by Kirtas for optimal reading and printing, and a newly-printed copy will be shipped to the initiator. Or, the customer can purchase access to an online-only version of the book. Once the book has been digitized, it is returned undamaged to the library shelf.
Google took some flak when people realized that the scanning of new books often entailed chopping the book apart (disbinding is the politically correct term) to aid in the digitizing process. Lets be clear though, Google doesn’t do this with the books that come from library collections.
The landscape for digitization is relatively small. Kirtas seemed to have the inside track when they partnered with Microsoft in their Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects. However, both of the aforementioned projects were shuttered last year, leaving Kirtas in a David versus Goliath position with Google.
Mind you, there are other digitizing companies out there. Julian Ball, Manager of the BOPCRIS Digitisation Centre based within the Hartley Library at the University of Southampton, reviewed the four competing scanners at a public exhibition in Munich.
The wrinkle is that many digitizing experts seem to believe Google’s scanning technique, a proprietary process, is suboptimal. Some claim the scans are passable, while others believe rescanning might be necessary in some instances. This might not mean a lot to the everyman, but it’s a hot topic for historians and librarians.
Think of it this way, you’d have wanted the monks with the best penmanship to help preserve texts through the dark ages, right?
Here’s a look at the Kirtas 2400 Scanner.
For irony go watch the Kirtas Book Digitization Tour video.
I might give Kirtas Books a spin and you should too if you want an ‘analog’ book or a digital book that is in the public domain and available at the University of Pennsylvania Library.
Overall, I’m happy to see more momentum behind the digitization of books. I fully believe Google, or gBooks as I’ve come to call it, has the inside track on this business, and by a wide margin, over everyone else including Amazon via Kindle. More competition can only be good at this stage, leading to innovation and better products.
