A Google Official Stresses the Positive

Forum: Join an online discussion about the impact on publishing and scholarship of Google's plans to scan millions of books and make the full texts part of its popular search index. Printer friendly E-mail article Subscribe Order reprints

What will Google do next? Representatives of the company divulge few details of their projects -- a policy that, in the case of its partnerships with university libraries, probably only fuels the buzz. Adam M. Smith, a senior business-product manager who is working on the book-scanning project, says the company is meeting with publishers and hopes to add even more books to its collection. He would not say how long the project will last, but others estimate it will take nearly a decade.

Q. Has Google started adding the scanned library books to its index yet?

A. There's a handful of books that are in the index today from the libraries, and we are continuing to work with each of the individual partners to scan more books and eventually it will all be available in the index. ... We're just very much in the early stages of a long project right now.

Q. Is it true that Google is in discussions with libraries about expanding the project?

A. Unfortunately we don't speak about what other discussions we're in. It's safe to say it's the company's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. ... We really hope that this program serves as a catalyst for other digitization initiatives as well. And what we hope to do is create a product that integrates not just the digitization work we're doing with our partners today, but also to work with other digitization efforts to make sure that those volumes, those works, are integrated seamlessly into the Google Print product.

Q. Google is working directly with publishers to secure book content, so why did you decide to also work with libraries?

A. We realized in working with the publishers directly that you can't get access to all of the world's published materials [that way]. The vast majority -- depending on estimates, 80 to 90 percent of the world's books -- are actually out of print. And so libraries became a natural partner in this case, in that they had developed, over hundreds of years, wonderful collections of rich materials. ...

It is important to note that for books that we get directly from publishers that are in copyright, we have the ability to show some percentage of the book per month to the users, so they actually have the ability to see and sample a number of pages before they decide if they want to purchase the book. For books that we get that are from libraries in copyright, we actually show just a very limited portion -- three short excerpts -- and so the experience isn't as great as those in-copyright works that we get from publishers. And so our preference is to get those books directly from publishers.

Q. Some publishers have questioned whether Google has the right, under copyright, to make digital copies of many of these library books.

A. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't speak to the specific legal issues. We believe we're creating a product that is beneficial to publishers and to libraries -- that by allowing full-text search of the books, we would spur additional interest in books and in using books and in purchasing books in a way that will benefit all people that are interested in publishing generally.

Q. Some publishers have also raised concerns about the project and are seeking more information from Google.

A. We've had conversations with most of the major publishing and authors groups, and we welcome conversation and dialogue. ... We believe we're creating a product that is useful for authors, publishers, and all involved with the industry, and we've really strived to create dialogue with these folks.