The Complutense University of Madrid is becoming the first library in a non-English-speaking country to join Google Inc.'s bid to scan every book in print, as the controversial project extends its global reach.
The university's library, the country's second largest behind the National Library, houses 3 million works, including thousands of Spanish-language public domain books, including those of Cervantes and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz....
"We already have other non-English-language books, but this will be a huge boost to our Spanish-language content, as well as other languages," a Google spokeswoman said on Tuesday....
Following the legal threats, some of Google's library partners said they would only allow scanning of public domain works, and delay anything still protected by copyright until the issue was resolved by the courts.
Only the University of Michigan said it would proceed with scanning all works.
Update. A short article in the September 27 Chronicle of Higher Education makes clear (as the Reuters articles did not) that Complutense will only allow Google to scan public-domain books from its library.
Update. Also see Google's press release (September 26, 2006). Excerpt:
The library of the Complutense University of Madrid is the largest university library in Spain. "Out of copyright books previously only available to people with access to Madrid's Complutense University Library, or the money to travel, will now be accessible to everyone with an Internet connection, wherever they live," said Carlos Berzosa, Chancellor of the Complutense University of Madrid. "We are quite literally opening our library to the world. The opportunities for education are phenomenal and we are delighted to be working with Google on this project."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/26/2006 09:53:00 PM.
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.
