

What if Google's mission extended to public records? - ilamont
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/09/29/what-if-googles-mission-extended-public-records

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aristus
Excellent idea. While you're at it, think about the difference between "public
record" and "one corporation controlling access to information". Putting this
stuff online is a great idea. Putting all this stuff into the hands of one
company is not.

Has anyone else noticed that you can _search_ the OCRed text of the Google
newspaper archive, but you can't actually download it?

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pgebhard
It's not like these newspapers aren't still available somewhere in their dead-
tree form. I assume Google isn't the only place where these newspapers are
archived. They just made it easier to access and search the papers.

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ilamont
Just a quick thing to add: I spoke with the CEO of Ancestry.com after I wrote
this article, and he brought up an important fact relating to the digitization
of public records: OCR technology doesn't work well with handwritten records
from disparate sources, such as the forms used by census takers. The company
actually uses human transcription services outside the U.S. to transcribe many
records.

I'll be posting a follow-up article later this week about this issue.

