Open Access News

Scott Carlson, U. of California Will Provide Up to 3,000 Books a Day to Google for Scanning, Contract States, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 25, 2006. Excerpt:

A mere two months after the University of California begins its book-digitization project with Google, the university may provide the search company with a whopping 3,000 books a day for scanning. That nugget, and many others, can be found in a confidential contract that allowed California to join Harvard and Stanford Universities, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Oxford, as well as the New York Public Library, in the search-engine company's elaborate and controversial library-digitization effort.

The contract was released in part as a response to an open-records request from The Chronicle.

According to the document, the university will provide at least 2.5 million volumes to Google for scanning, starting with 600 books a day and ratcheting up over time to 3,000 volumes a day. Materials pulled for scanning will be back on the shelves of their libraries within 15 days.

The contract offers clues to the scale of Google's ambition. "It is simply stunning that they can work with 3,000 books a day," said Prudence S. Adler, associate executive director of the Association of Research Libraries, after reviewing the contract.

Daniel Greenstein, director of the California Digital Library, who helped set up the deal, said Google had committed early on to a core value for the university: public access to the public-domain materials at no cost. "They said, As long as we are alive as a company, or successors are alive using this file, we will make it available for free," he said. "I've never seen this from anybody. That was their opening gambit." ...

Both the university and Google will get digital copies of the scanned works, but there are some restrictions on how the university can use its copies. The university can offer the digital copy, whole or in parts, "as part of services offered to the university library patrons." But the university must prevent users from downloading portions of the digital copies and stop automated scanning of the copies by, for example, other search engines.

Entire works not covered under copyright can be distributed to scholars and students for research purposes, but there are limits on in-copyright material. The university retains a right to distribute no more than 10 percent of the collection to other libraries and educational institutions for noncommercial research....

Officials at Google provided few insights into the contract. The restrictions placed on the digital files, particularly those covered by copyright, were requested by both Google and the University of California, Adam M. Smith, the group business-product manager at Google, said in an e-mail message....

[S]ome publishers have been worried about how libraries might use their digital copies from Google. Sanford Thatcher, director of Pennsylvania State University Press and president-elect of the Association of American University Presses, said that the agreement gave the university too much leeway. "California could set itself up as a facility for providing e-reserves to all land-grant institutions," he said....

Others fretted that the University of California was giving too much to Google. Brewster Kahle, co-founder of the nonprofit Internet Archive, said the contract was another step in the "balkanization" of the digital library system. He said that while each of the institutions that have partnerships with Google will get digitized versions of their own books, they will not be able to share those versions to build a digital library. Only Google will have the most comprehensive collection, he said. "We want a public library system in the digital age, but what we are getting is a private library system controlled by a single corporation," he said....

Mr. Kahle forged a partnership with the University of California in forming the Open Content Alliance, which also includes Yahoo, Microsoft, and institutions such as Columbia University, the Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Toronto. The alliance, which has made open access a core component of its mission, is scanning only out-of-copyright materials.

"Microsoft, Yahoo, the Sloan Foundation, and dozens of libraries are funding a public and open system, but this is made more difficult by UC's agreeing to spend millions of taxpayers' dollars to benefit a single corporation's interest in building a private library," he said. "Needless to say, I am disappointed and hope it does not undermine others' interest in pursuing broad public benefit."

Mr. Greenstein said that the University of California was digitizing at full capacity with the Open Content Alliance, and would continue to do so. But one has to look at the Google deal from the university's point of view, he said. With the Open Content Alliance, "I think last month we did 3,500 books. ... Google is going to do that in a day. So, what do you do?"

"I understand [Google's] ends are commercial," he said. "But it's one of these things where their business model, their interests, and our interests align around public access for the public domain forever and for free."