Scott Carlson and Jeffrey Young, Google Will Digitize and Search Millions of Books From 5 Top Research Libraries, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 7, 2005 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: 'Just how much access to copyrighted works will be allowed is still open to question, he said. "It's going to begin a dialogue between Google and the publishers, and the libraries and the publishers. We don't know the outcome of those discussions yet."...Paul N. Courant, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said the digital collection at Michigan would be used "to the maximum extent permitted by law." He envisions students' and researchers' getting access to works in the public domain from their home computers. He also sees the university library setting up a catalog in which the entire collection is searchable down to the level of words and phrases. A project like this is worth "hundreds of millions" of dollars to the university, he said. "This is an important moment in the history of libraries, and an important moment in the history of scholarship."...Brewster Kahle, librarian for the Internet Archive, appreciates Google's commitment to putting books online. "I think Google will do a great job of that," he said, "as well as other search companies" that will very likely follow suit. But Mr. Kahle said he hoped the libraries involved would also place copies of their scanned books in open-access archives. Otherwise, he said, the result will effectively "commercialize the public domain."...It is unclear whether there will be such open access to the books that Google scans, however. Under the terms of the libraries' deals with Google, each university will be given a digital copy of every book scanned and will be able to use those copies in almost any way it wants. One restriction, however, is that the libraries cannot "give it all to Yahoo or the other search companies," noted Oxford's Mr. Milne. Mr. Milne said he would be "happy to talk to anybody about any sensible idea" to add the university's digital copies to open archives, as long as doing so stayed within the bounds of the university's agreement with Google. "We as librarians are quite used to cooperating with our peers at other institutions," he added.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/03/2005 10:54:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
