University In U.S. Joins Google Book Scan Push

[engine]

The University of California has joined Google Inc.'s bid to scan the book collections of the world's great libraries, the organisations said on Tuesday, marking renewed momentum for a project nearly derailed by stiff resistance from publishers.

The top Web search company said it will fund the scanning of "several million" of the 34 million titles in the University of California's libraries, as part of a year-and-a-half old project to make major library collections searchable online.

University In U.S. Joins Google Book Scan Push [today.reuters.co.uk]

That's a heck of a lot of books and data!

[TypicalSurfer]

Google is too cheap to even buy the books and they claim they are "helping" the publisher, the deal will be tied up in controversy/court cases for years. Yahoo! has a much friendlier position; its opt-in for publishers/authors not take it and fight about it later.

[laertes]

I wonder what would happen if Google decided to try this with music and movies as well?

"Google announces new iniatiative to digitize and store on it's servers all the world movies."

[walkman]

>> Google is too cheap to even buy the books and they claim they are "helping" the publisher,

well, buying a book each will not help their case either.

[robertdjung]

part of the point is that these books are out of print -- why buy them? they're in the library.

[europeforvisitors]

Google is too cheap to even buy the books and they claim they are "helping" the publisher,

They're scanning only "several million" of 34 million titles, so they won't be helping or hurting the publishers in most cases (especially since many of those books are likely be out of print or even in the public domain).

Maybe you're confusing the Google Books Library Project with the Google Books Partner Program. You can learn about both programs (including the differences between them) at:

Library Project
[books.google.com...]

Partner Program
[books.google.com...]

[TypicalSurfer]

Maybe you're confusing the Google Books Library Project with the Google Books Partner Program. You can learn about both programs (including the differences between them) at:

Library Project
[books.google.com...]

Partner Program
[books.google.com...]

Thanks for the links but in typical googly speak they say nothing and as usual the agreements made with the universities are shrouded in secrecy via NDAs. Bottom line is they could at least BUY a few books, they act like starving grad students while fussing over the size of their beds in the personal 767. :0

Universities in the US are heavily funded with taxpayer dollars (Stanford is 35% taxpayer funded) and the agreements they make with G$$G or anyone else should be subject to sunshine laws. It all smacks of "dirty dealing".

[edited by: TypicalSurfer at 10:10 pm (utc) on Aug. 9, 2006]

[rogerd]

Buying copies of long out-of-print books to scan wouldn't accomplish much other than enriching a few used-book dealers at time of purchase and again when it was time to dispose of them at pennies on the dollar. It's quite likely that many of these volumes are so obscure they no longer are found outside of repositories like academic libraries.

[smells so good]

There doesn't seem to be much enthuiasm for this project. I say it is long overdue, like an old book.

heavily funded with taxpayer dollars

And so isn't it time for the taxpayer to reap some benefit from that funding? Not everyone will avail themselves of this resourse, but those that do may find heretofore unavailable gems. From a research perspective alone this sounds like a blessing, and better serves a piece of the web.

[europeforvisitors]

Today's WASHINGTON POST has an excellent (and evenhanded) article on the library project that you can read here [washingtonpost.com].

[TypicalSurfer]

G$$G is going to play "courtroom" in an attempt to steamroll authors and publishers, its not a public service project, its a money grab.

[edited by: TypicalSurfer at 2:59 am (utc) on Aug. 14, 2006]