Laelaps is the blog of freelance science writer 
I have spoken before of my fondness for book digitization projects, but there are still some improvements to be made. Many of the titles presently available via resources like Google Books are relatively low-quality and look no better than photocopies, but with the basic move towards digitization in place, there have been some movement towards enhancing the quality of rare, old books.
Archive.org, for instance, has a number of titles available as high quality pdfs I had been unable to find on Google Books. Without it I would never have been able to see Arthur Keith's Antiquity of Man without forking over hard-earned-cash for a hard copy. There are books much older and rarer, though, and Janet has just reported on a fancy new digitization project undertaken by the National Libraries of Medicine.
Called the "Turning the Pages Project," the initiative features interactive, high-quality scans of books like De Humani Corporis Fabrica and Historiae Animalium (and there are plenty more to choose from, of course).
It may not be possible for me to read the physical books, but without such digitization projects, they would only be inaccessible references. I hope the program meets success and helps continue to make hard-to-find titles available to all.
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
I would also like to recomend biodiversitylibrary.org .
Archive.org search does cover the biodiversity library but frankly I have found that the biodiv website is far more easier to navigate .
Posted by: Ville Sinkkonen | November 8, 2008 3:36 PM
Thanks for the other links. I use Google books all the time and new sources are always welcome.
As a time saver, I sometimes use Google Books even when I have the book in hand, especially when the text doesn't have an index. I can search the book for key terms to find the right page to look on even if my "preview" limit is reached. It'll still give you the page number with hits that look like: "Page 62. You have reached your viewing limit for this book."
Posted by: cfeagans | November 8, 2008 4:17 PM
Well, the other nice thing is that as the books are digitized we don't have to worry about losing them to paper disintegration; preserving them for the future.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | November 8, 2008 7:19 PM