U. of California System's 100 Libraries Join Google's Controversial Book-Scanning Project

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

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U. of California system's 100 libraries join Google's controversial book-scanning project



The University of California system has joined Google's controversial book-digitization project, and the partnership is expected to convert millions of books from the system's 100 libraries -- even volumes that are protected by copyright -- into fully searchable electronic texts. Google officials say they plan to add even more academic libraries to the program in the near future.

The university system is the seventh major participant to join Google's ambitious effort to add digital versions of books to its popular online search engine, and the first full partner to join since two groups of publishers sued to stop the company from scanning any books still covered by copyright.

"We're comfortable that the activity is fully respectful of copyright law," said Daniel Greenstein, executive director of the California Digital Library, a division of the university system.

Other participants in the Google project, which began in December 2004, include Harvard University, the New York Public Library, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Oxford, in England. The Library of Congress is taking part in a pilot stage of the project as well.

Some publishers and authors are challenging the project because the company plans to scan not only books in the public domain but also those on which copyright has not run out. Google has defended the legality of the project, stressing that its search results will offer only short excerpts from copyrighted books unless longer excerpts are authorized by a book's publisher. Publishers and authors argue that Google must obtain permission before scanning a copyrighted work.

Some library partners in the program, such as Harvard, have sidestepped the controversy by deciding to allow only out-of-copyright books to be scanned by Google. But the University of California has decided to allow copyrighted books to be scanned. The University of Michigan is also allowing copyrighted books to be scanned, but it made that decision before lawsuits had been filed challenging the practice.

Even though Google will pay for the book scanning, the project will still cost the University of California money. The university estimates that it will spend about $1 per book to store a digital copy in an archive over the first five years of the project, and about 10 cents a book per year after that.

Officials would not say how many books would be scanned or how the books will be chosen. But the number of volumes "could go into the millions," said Mr. Greenstein. He said scanning should begin "in the next several weeks."

The University of California is already involved in a competing mass-digitization project, the Open Content Alliance, which includes 30 universities as well as Yahoo and Microsoft (The Chronicle, January 27). Mr. Greenstein said the university plans to continue working with that project as well.

The word used by officials at both Google and the university to describe the project's benefits for academe is "discoverability." Allowing scholars to search the full texts of millions of books quickly, officials argue, will make it possible for researchers to discover books that might help their research but that they wouldn't have known about otherwise.

That, in turn, "will allow library users to make connections between information and ideas that were hitherto inaccessible, driving the pace of scholarly innovation and enhancing the use of our great libraries," according to a fact sheet prepared by the university about the project.

Adam M. Smith, group business-product manager for Google's book-search project, said in an interview that the company is in talks with other libraries as well.

"We are actively in dialogues with other university and academic libraries that have interesting special collections," he said, adding that some of the libraries are in other countries. "Hopefully, in a short time here, we'll be able to announce some additional libraries located outside of the United States."

Why keep adding institutions when some of the world's largest libraries are already involved? "We have the higher-level objective of creating a product where users can search the full text of all the world's books in a single place," Mr. Smith said.

• U. of California Is in Talks to Join Google's Library-Scanning Project (8/3/2006)

• Google Wages Fresh Campaign Against Critics of Project to Digitize Library Books (2/23/2006)

• U. of Michigan President Defends Library's Role in Controversial Google Scanning Project (2/7/2006)

• Scribes of the Digital Era (1/27/2006)

• Google Adds First Scanned Library Books to Search Index, and Says Copyrighted Works Will Follow (11/3/2005)

• 5 Big Publishing Houses Sue Google to Prevent Scanning of Copyrighted Works (10/20/2005)

• Academic Press and Prolific Author Tell Google to Remove Their Books From Its Scanning Project (10/7/2005)

• U. of Michigan Unveils Its Book-Scanning Contract With Google (6/20/2005)