Launched at this year's Frankfurt Book Festival, which is the largest annual world gathering of publishing executives, Google Literacy is a resource for teachers, literacy organisations and anyone interested in reading and education. Through it, Google endeavours to provide a set of rich resources to combat illiteracy across the globe, and at the same time strengthen its educational credentials. Vice-President of Google's European Operations, Nikesh Arora, said:
"Google's business was born out of a desire to help people find information. We hope this site will serve as a bridge to even greater communication and access to important information about literacy problems - and solutions."
The last few weeks have seen both YouTube and Yahoo! Video in the news for expanding their own video services; and by allowing literacy groups around the world to upload video segments explaining and demonstrating their successful teaching programmes, The Literacy Project, which is already available in English and German, will significantly bolster Google's video service and aid Google Video's task in catching up with YouTube.
The Google Foundation have been dealing in literacy projects for some time now. Earlier this year, Google gave Same Language Subtitling (SLS), a pioneering literacy scheme in India which uses Bollywood films to teach reading, a grant to improve and expand their services. In a country of 1 billion people, where only 562 million are literate, Google have rightly recognised the importance of the SLS's contributions to increasing literacy rates; and the SLS have now contributed some of the first few hundred videos to be posted on The Literacy Project.
826NYC, a non-profit organisation in New York dedicated to helping 6 -18 year-olds expand their literacy skills, has welcomed Google's Literacy Project. Joan Kim, 826NYC's Director of Education commented:
"When our students see the web as something they can contribute to - rather than just browse through - they're inspired to think bigger, write more and film more." 826NYC students are currently making a series of video tutorials for Google's Literacy Project.
As well as video usage, The Literacy Project allows users to access a multiplicity of tools. These include:
- A comprehensive book and academic paper search facility.
- Blogs and group discussions for sharing literacy techniques.
- Google Earth, which will flag important literacy projects across the globe.
The Literacy Project may be seen as part of Google's wider initiative to expand access to literature and reading resources. Two years ago, Google began a mammoth project to digitally scan all the world's books and make them available online. While this project has been met with mixed reactions - with a group of publishers filing a lawsuit against Google for copyright violation - those who have embraced Google's intentions have rightly seen the project for what it is: an admirable step towards increasing access to literary resources across the world - and perhaps the first step to creating a viable global library.
