Google Book Search

There was an interesting article in the Sunday August 13 Washington Post, Search Me? about the Google Book Search project and copyright issues. There is a little on how the book scanning project first came to be, which I had not read before. The discussion of the suit between publishers and Google captures some of the issues but does not address the truly significant problem of "orphaned" works. Those books, out of print, possibly in the public domain, possibly not, represent a huge obstacle to all digitization projects. These books represent around 70% of the books which could be scanned but finding who might control the copyright for any of these books is often quite impossible.

Jill and Izzy get Married

A couple of weeks ago, Friday July 28, my niece Jill married Ismael Hernandez. It was really great fun. They had a really talented mariachi band that played all of the old classics while we were eating. Then they had a DJ that played everything from Ranchero music to hip hop to Frank Sinatra. What a "multicultural" musical experience! Cely and I even got out on the floor for a norteño polka medley. It went so long that we couldn't even make it through the entire thing. It was really fun though. I kept it up and tried a cumbia with my younger sister, Nancy. I learned that I really don't know how to cumbia. But here is a picture of me with Jill during the dollar dance. That's their cute little son Ritchie. He was the ring bearer.