Google"s mission is to organise the world"s information, but what effect is this having on the oldest information technology - books? In the slow moving book industry there have been few seminal moments. In the third century BC, Ptolmy II of Egypt established his great library at Alexandria and commanded all visitors to the city to surrender their books to be copied by his scribes.
Around 1,700 years later Johannes Gutenberg revolutionised the document industry with his invention of moveable type for the printing press, allowing the first efficient, mass production of books and other pamphlets which could then be distributed across the known world. Half a millennium later and now Google has stepped up to the mark with its audacious plan to bring books from print into the digital age. The Californian internet search and advertising giant is over two years into two pilot projects: one to digitally copy the collections of libraries, and another to allow users to search for, and order, any hard copy publication.