Google Books, A Library of Babel

At the front of each book it’s scanned, Google proudly proclaims “This is a digital copy of a book…carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world’s books discoverable online.” Despite the controversy over the settlement, most people will agree that Google’s scanning of public domain works provides an undeniable bounty and increases the store of accessible knowledge. But it’s also undeniable that Google’s scans are full of little errors, the product of the software that has to interpret the original scans and turn them into digital text.