Back in April we posted on the ways in which reCAPTCHA, an anti-spam mechanism, was helping Google to digitize many older novels as well as the the entire New York Times archive.
Well, now that it has been a few months we wondered: ‘what might reCAPTCHA be helping with next?’ Turns out approximately 250,000 books from the British Library! In a deal recently announced between Google and the British Library, Google will work to bring books housed in the British Library that are no longer covered by copyright online. So next time you are asked to complete a reCAPTCHA just know that you might be helping to bring a piece of the British Library online.
After all, no security. These are programs that can easily break Captcha