RESPONDING TO HUFFINGTON POST'S "GOOGLE IS GREAT FOR CLASSIC BOOKS"

Responding to Huffington Post- GOOGLE IS GREAT FOR CLASSIC BOOKS

Today at 10:00am |
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/google-is-great-for-class_n_308777.html#comments

This is a topic front and center with me right now...more so everyday as I begin to read the discussions of the changing nature of online and print journalism...nytimes last sunday for instance... (Digital Domain - Will Piracy Become a Problem for E-Books? - NYTimes.com)...which is one of many deeply reflective articles I have seen lately...all this while I am on a personal learning curve with 'how to' on the web. (Also see "Why I Blog" in The Atlantic Monthly.)

Below (from my blog) is a story about a google search I did because our editor wanted a reference for a poem fragment...below is an excerpt from a book we recently published (The Western Book of Crossing Over: Conversations with the Other Side)..as I described this experience within the body of the book. Actually, the wonderful search experience I had through Google has been rather a 'life-changing event for me!

I am continuing to study this present phenomenon in publishing...it's as if I am seeing a mobius strip shimmering in the mind-currents..


http://drawingfromwithin.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html

GOOGLE AND THE AKASHIC


http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUS422108559020090706

"Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture, and knowledge that's often difficult to discover." I think we should be thankful to Google and Eric Schmidt, and not pile up the whole legal system on his Monday morning breakfast plate.

Upon reading the above article "Google's Dark Day"...I just want to say that I appreciate what Google is doing with rare books. I actually see this effort as a way of making accessible the "akashic" if you will. Here is a story which illustrates what I mean, and how Google can work for us.

This story is from our recent work with "The Western Book of Crossing Over...." ...I will quote from pages 82-83 …Lorraine has transmitted from the other side the following fragment of a poem. Sheldon has written it down exactly as it was given to him and included it in his writing of the book. The fragment:

For see, there nothing is in all the world

But only love worth any strife or song or tear.

Ask me not then to sing or fashion songs

Other than this, my song of love to thee.

--From the Arabic, "The Camel Rider"

"As a brief aside, we share the following: When the copy editor set us searching for a source for this poem fragment, we were at first dismayed and then amazed at what we [Sheldon and Barbara] uncovered. Sheldon said, "Where to look? I have never heard of this poem, nor of any reference to it. This just came from Lorraine, and I wrote it down."

After I [Barbara] spent a couple of hours looking for the proverbial needle in that haystack we call the World Wide Web of information now stored in cyberspace, I did find the poem from which the lines are taken. I found By Thy Light I Live: The Poetry of Wilfrid Blunt, selected and arranged by W.E. Henley and George Wyndham. It was published in London by William Heinemann in 1898, and printed by Ballantyne, Hanson& Co. of London and Edinburgh. The lines are found on page 273, taken from the last stanza of "The Camel Rider." Looking further, I discovered that Wilfrid S. Blunt was born in 1840 and died in 1922. All this certainly leaves me with some deep thoughts about the memory bank in the Akashic Field.

It is not only remarkable that Sheldon was able to record this from Lorraine's transmission, but also that I was able to locate the source. This book is digitized by Google from its resting place in the Library of the University of Michigan. I found the Google commentary rather lovely and poetic in itself, and worthy of reproduction here:

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary from country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture, and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations, and other marginal"ia present in the original volume will appear in this file—a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you. Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. –Google


"Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture, and knowledge that's often difficult to discover." I think we should be thankful to Google, and not pile up the whole legal system on his Monday morning breakfast plate.
--BSS

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/google-is-great-for-class_n_308777.html

See Global Groups discussion on Facebook...THE WESTERN BOOK OF CROSSING OVER:CONVERSATIONS WITH THE OTHER SIDE