The Google news release also contains a comment about Europeana, a European Commission project to digitize cultural materials from around Europe. For those interested, this page lists the organizations participating in the Europeana program. According to their web site, they have six million items (images, texts, books, sounds, videos) digitized so far.
In addition to Europeana there is also the European Library Material in this database comes from National Libraries throughout Europe.
On the topic of other digitization in Europe, the Google Blog notes:
Digitization of books is a tremendous undertaking, requiring the joint effort of a great number of public and private stakeholders. For this reason, we’re supportive of many other efforts at digitization, such as the European Commission's Europeana. We want to see these books have the broadest reach possible — the books we scan are available for inclusion in Europeana, of which the Florence Library is a contributing member, and other digital libraries. The more of the world's historical, cultural treasures we can bring online, the more we can unlock our shared heritage.
Stay tuned. It will also be interesting to see what other digital library projects ask for access to the scanned content.
2) The other news from Google is about Google Maps. Beginning today, biking directions are available. The company says this has been a very frequent request of users. You'll also find over 12,000 miles of bike trail info (from selected third parties including the Rails to Trails Conservancy that is also visible on maps. This second post is very interesting. It discusses many variables and other factors that go into creating a bike routing program.
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