Wow! This is a royal treat and good news. At a time when Classics are just disappearing from students’ mindscape, Google is making available thousands of great old books free to read and download. “Just in time for the start of a new school year,” says The Boston Globe.
“For now, the Google Book Search service offers full downloads only of ‘public domain’ books, whose copyrights have expired. These include many of the most famous titles of all time, such as the writings of Dickens, Shakespeare, and Dante.
“It’s the latest milestone in Google’s campaign to do for books what it has done for websites. “Our goal is to create a comprehensive, full-text index of all the world’s books,” said Google Book Search group business product manager Adam Smith.
“But Google is also providing brief ‘snippets’ of copyrighted works by major publishers, outraging book publishers and authors who say the company has no right to reproduce them without permission.
“In addition to famous titles, Google Book Search features many obscure and forgotten books by long-dead novelists and scholars that it obtained through contracts with libraries at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Stanford University, Oxford University, and the University of California. The New York Public Library is also participating in the project.”
Of course I would miss that musty smell of the classics bequeathed to me by my father and grandad and the feel of the pages that are so fragile!
Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.)
Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a nearly five-decade-old art and culture monthly magazine promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi.
In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked there for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy.
He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for the BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in two eastern States in India — West Bengal and Orissa.
Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking, and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia.
Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there.
He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation.
And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others.