[新鲜书市]Google未来图书:Google版电子书

当你需要查找资料的时候，下意识的动作是打开IE浏览器，登陆Google，还是匆匆出门，去图书馆找个究竟?
作为全球知名的搜索网络，Google正计划将牛津大学、密歇根大学、斯坦福大学以及纽约公共图书馆等几家顶级研究性图书馆的馆藏著作转化成为电子文件，放到网上让人们免费搜索阅读。在很多人看来，Google的这个计划是踏出了建立全球虚拟图书馆的第一。Google图书和解协议主要用于处理过去和绝版的书籍。昨晚在山景城的计算机历史博物馆参加一场讨论会时，Google Books的项目主管丹·克兰西（Dan Clancy）首次清晰地描述了该项目的发展计划。此外，Google希望建立起面向未绝版书籍的电子书店。在Google的设想中，出版商将与公司进行合作，将它们所有的书籍通过Google和传统零售书店两种途径发售。

Google's Vision for the Future of Google Books: EBook Store, Google Editions

Google's vision for Google Books obviously goes far beyond the controversial Google Book Search settlement with the Authors Guild and the AAP. The Google Books settlement mostly dealt with the past and out-of-print books. In a talk at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View （山景城的计算机历史博物馆）last night, however, Google Books' engineering director Dan Clancy（项目主管丹·克兰西） laid out a clearer vision of the company's plans for Google Books for the first time. Among other things, the company hopes to create its own electronic bookstore for in-print books. In Google's vision, publishers would partner with the company and offer all of their books through Google and through traditional retailers.

Google's eBook Store in the Cloud（云间的的谷歌图书书店）

In his remarks, Clancy stressed that he doesn't believe that brick and mortar book retailers will die anytime soon. He did, however, argue that book retailers will have to adapt to the changing environment and start to offer digital copies of books in addition to regular print copies. In Clancy's vision, Google will "syndicate for our partner program all of the books we sell that are new, so that any bookstore can sell a Google edition and find a way that people can buy them in brick and mortar stores as well."

Clancy did stress, however, that books will always be stored in the cloud, so we are not quite sure if this means that users will basically only buy access rights to a book but won't be able to store a copy on their devices for offline reading. As most book publishers are still extremely nervous about the potential for piracy, cloud storage might indeed be a way to alleviate some of these fears for Google.

Google Editions: Readable on Any Device（谷歌图书：任何设备均可以阅读）

Clancy also stressed that these "Google editions" should be readable on any device, including laptops, phones, and dedicated eReaders. In addition, Google wants to work with any publisher that is willing to work with Google to offer books in the Google cloud.

Of course, Google's relationship with publishers is rather rocky, so it remains to be seen how many publishers would really want to sign on to this program. At the same time, though, most publishers also aren't exactly happy with Amazon either. What is clear, though, is that Google plans to create its own cloud-based alternative to eBooks stores from established retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Keke View：据《纽约时报》近日所做的一些调查显示，很多学者、图书管理员都对Google的这一计划表示了赞同。加利福尼亚大学的信息学教授保罗-达盖德称赞说，这一计划的推行，将以最快的速度打破世界顶级图书馆之间的禁忌之墙。纽约城市大学研究生中心的人文学院院长大卫-纳索也表示，通过关键词来搜索书籍以及研究文献，不仅可以缩短学术研究成果传播的时间、减少传播过程中所花费的金钱，同时以一种十分便捷的方式拓宽了科学家们研究的视野。