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The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has released the details of the contract it signed with Google to digitize books and allow the texts to be searchable online.
John P. Wilkin, an associate university librarian at Michigan, said the university made the contract available to give more “transparency” to the controversial partnership. Many publishing groups have expressed concern about putting the contents of books online, saying that doing so without permission from the copyright owner would be illegal.
The contract shows that the university is not making any money in the deal, Mr. Wilkin said, although Google is compensating the university for the costs of handling and transporting the books.
“We try to ensure that there’s as much information out there as possible to lay to rest any conspiracy theories,” Mr. Wilkin said. “I hope that whoever thought that there was something lurking in the contract will find that it is very straightforward.”
Google has made deals with five of the world’s largest libraries to digitize the entire contents of millions of books in the public domain for the online search. The institutions also plan to digitize copyrighted books as well, although only brief excerpts from them will appear in search results. Three other university libraries are also involved -- at Harvard and Stanford Universities and at the University of Oxford, in England -- as is the New York Public Library.
The contract says the agreement between the University of Michigan and Google must follow copyright law. “If at any time, either party becomes aware of copyright infringement under this agreement, that party shall inform the other as quickly as reasonably possible,” the contract states.
It continues: “If either party reasonably determines that a portion of the Selected Content that was previously thought to be in the public domain is actually subject to copyright, that party shall promptly notify the other party in a writing that particularly identifies the portion(s) and provides an explanation for why the portion(s) are believed to be subject to copyright.”
Members of publishing organizations were not available over the weekend to comment on the new contract. Mr. Wilkin said he expects to continue working through the copyright issues with them.
“I’m sure we will grapple with the copyright issues for a while now,” he said. “It’s time to move on to the big interesting issues for what this means for higher education, for research libraries, and for an informed public.”
The contract is available on the university’s Web site (requires Adobe Reader, available free).
Background articles from The Chronicle: