When all we might be hearing about is what Larry Page and Sergey Brin are doing with their new-found giga-wealth, something far more fascinating is happening at Google.

No doubt you've heard the news that Google announced its partnership with the libraries of four major universities, as well as the New York City Public Library. The intent is to bring the great bulk of their books and archives to the digital world - and more than that, to make them searchable. This is nothing short of an historic moment, one that the Google boys - and, in fact, lots of other people - only imagined in their wildest dreams.

But now that they've gotten everyone's attention and have set out on this quest, don't expect it to be finished by next Tuesday. And don't think for a moment that this effort doesn't come with still-to-be-solved technical challenges of every ilk.

For starters, books are technology. Depending on how old they are, what materials they're made of, how they were constructed and how they've been stored, even opening one of these books can cause damage. Even when you finally isolate a page, there's the prospect of damage from shining intense light onto it in order to scan it in. This presumes, of course, the page-by-page exposure to the air each book will now experience, and the scars of that experience will be borne on each book for the rest of its life.

Clearly, Google understands this. Go deep within their website, and you'll find the simple statement: "No library books were harmed during the making of these digital copies." That's not by chance - that's by design. And while Google isn't talking about how they're going about this, I don't blame them. They will proceed with caution, and no doubt, create new technological approaches on how to do respectful digital archiving along the way. And the processes and protocols will evolve and improve as they proceed.

Golly, do you think they're using a good old-fashioned Silicon Valley clean room? Only guessing here, only guessing.

While some news stories have focused on the fact that Google isn't revealing its techniques, I'm all for it. All they need now is a bunch of nosy parkers getting into the act about what they should and shouldn't do. It's what my grandmother meant when she said, "Too many cooks spoil the broth."

And haven't we all lived long enough to know that everything we do causes damage? Or should we politely call that "change?" There's no doubt in my mind that Google is taking careful and comprehensive precautions to ensure that to best of their knowledge and technology no library books will be harmed. And that's easy to believe. They're partnering with four great universities: Stanford, Michigan, Harvard and Oxford. The libraries of these universities wouldn't hand over their precious collections willy-nilly.

I say if we're going to do some damage, let's bite the bullet and get these puppies digitized and safe forever. And once they are digitized, there will be little reason for the great bulk of humanity to go back to the original physical source.

Maybe.

Being able to know that these books and papers actually live in the real world may create a driving human desire for physical contact. And would that be so bad? Old books and papers, letters and engravings, maps and the rest - could become prized by people who never had any idea they existed … just when we thought the Internet had gotten a teeny bit dull.

I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.

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