My life over the last two years has completely revolved around the digitization of books, but why? Why are we digitizing books? I’d like to think that it’s because we realize that the majority of the world’s knowledge is trapped in the written word, the world’s knowledge is trapped because the physicality of books locks the data in a container that only has one delivery vehicle.
Since the invention of the written word, mankind has recorded our history one event at a time by writing it down. As a result, man has spent countless hours poring over cave drawings, scrolls and manuscripts in hopes of learning from those who had the foresight to record the events that were important to them in their microcosm of time.
Technologies developed in the last half of the 20th century have provided us with the unique opportunity to not only record the vast knowledge accumulated in the world’s library through digitization, but to make that information available to the world via a plethora of delivery methods.