On the Inside Google Books blog, software engineer Leonid Taycher says the company has developed an algorithm to count all the books in the world.
He gives us a fascinating account of how Google software engineers took metadata from catalogs, library databases, and companies; purged duplicates; removed non-books; and tried to exclude serials.
What's the point?
According to Taycher, "When you are part of a company that is trying to digitize all the books in the world, the first question you often get is: 'Just how many books are out there?'"
The inevitable second question: What gives you the right to scan and make-searchable millions of books?
Unfortunately for Google, no algorithm -- no mater how sophisticated -- can provide an easy answer to that one. The legal battle over the Google Book Search project continues.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
