"Scan This Book!" - The Digitized Book and the Universal Library

Wired Magazine's Kevin Kelly delivers an eye-opening cover story in today's New York Times Magazine. "Scan This Book!" examines the present and future of the digital book. Kelly lists the various forces that are currently at work digitizing the world's knowledge. He states that currently, about a million books a year are being scanned by corporations and libraries internationally.

Clearly a proponent of these efforts, he points out that the most dramatic effect of having the world's knowledge digitized will not be on those of us who already have easy access to this bounty, "but on the "underbooked - students in Mali, scientists in Kazakhstan, elderly people in Peru - whose lives will be transformed when even the simplest unadorned version of the universal library is placed in their hands."

The article goes on to discuss the potential for cross-linking words, phrases, sentences, and names between books and for tagging books, efforts that Kelly believes will be carried out lovingly by readers on a volunteer basis, and that will lead to a vast network of relationships between and among books.

Also discussed is the publishing industry's current lawsuit against Google for its book-scanning program, and the reasons for the divide between digitization proponents and its detractors.

Perk up, bibliophiles! Read "Scan this book!" at www.nytimes.com.