This is my first article in the category “inspirovation” – a word which is a combination of “Inspiration” and “Innovation”. It will be articles about things which I find innovative, things which inspires me. So I hope that you will also get some “Aha!” and “Wow!” experiences when you read these articles. Please feel free to comment and perhaps leave your “inspirovatived”.
Google Books offers a very cool way of search for books using keywords. The innovative part of this service is that some of the books are actually available online for reading! Google I believe have signed a deal with US based publisher, and if I am not wrong this deal will allow many books to be available online for reading!
This idea I had myself many years back – in 1995. I was the leader on a project called “Around the world in 80 seconds” – a project which had the primary goal to offer internet access to everyone from libraries in Denmark. The project was my idea and it ran for 3 months in a library in Viborg Centralbibliotek, Viborg Kommune was the sponsor of this project which recieved much attention in the media. Today every library in Denmark have free access points to the internet.
With a background in and around publishing I knew that perhaps 99.5% of all printed books was being produced in a digital format – probertly at some point in the form of a PDF. On the libraries on the other hand much energi were put into printing those PDF files into paper format. The printed version would then get on the shelves of the libries and a few people at a time could then enjoy the books, while others had to wait, or perhaps never get the chance to read it (perhaps old people who could not overcome to goto the library).
My idea is/was: When you want to borrow a book from a library you can choose from a printed version (not always there, you need to reserve it) or a digital version (always there!). The idea is almost the same as what Google Books is 
In the future I would love to see something like that in a world-wide form: You can get any book, in any language from anywhere! Google Books might be a step in that direction! A very warm welcome to this service from me!
