At some point this isn’t headline news anymore: Google has added yet another university to its library project. The project’s new member is the University of Wisconsin at Madison, which will contribute historical documents for digitization.
The Wisconsin collections that Google will digitize will all be in the public domain. "It’s prudent for us," says Edward Van Gemert, acting director of libraries at the university, adding that "there is still a fair amount of controversy" surrounding the book project. Google has been hit by lawsuits from publishers and other copyright holders who allege that scanning copyrighted material defies the law.
Mr. Van Gemert says there is plenty of out-of-copyright material in the university’s collection of 7.2 million items, but he adds: "We may move into copyrighted material as time goes on."
The partnership is considered a boon for the university’s effort to digitize and preserve old documents, which was already underway. The university hopes that Google’s digitization efforts will help Wisconsin’s material reach public-school classrooms and undergraduate courses.
Historical documents are considered a strength of the Wisconsin library. A collection of literature on bees might be among the treasures digitized, along with documents covering the histories of engineering, medicine, and the arts.
Wisconsin joins the Complutense University of Madrid, Harvard and Stanford Universities, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the University of Oxford, and the University of California system, as well as the New York Public Library, in the company’s book-digitization project. –Scott Carlson
