Google Creating Grants to Study Digital Books

The details are still hazy. But we know this: Google will be launching a “collaborative research program to explore the digital humanities” using Google Books. Scholars will get up to $50,000 per year, and they’ll come from eight potential disciplines (archaeology, history, anthropology, linguistics, literature, classics, philosophy & sociology). And what’s the point of their research? Essentially to make Google’s online digital library more effective  and friendly for researchers. Just last year, a prominent academic called Google Books a “Disaster for Scholars” in a high profile forum. The new grants should begin to address these concerns in some meaningful ways. For more information, head over to The Chronicle of Higher Education, which has the full story.