Google To Digitize Much of Harvard's Library

FJCsar writes "According to an e-mail sent today to Harvard students, Google will collaborate with Harvard's libraries on a pilot project to digitize a substantial number of the 15 million volumes held in the University's extensive library system, which is second only to the Library of Congress in the number of volumes it contains. Google will provide online access to the full text of those works that are in the public domain. In related agreements, Google will launch similar projects with Oxford, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library. As of 9 am on December 14, a FAQ detailing the Harvard pilot program with Google will be available at hul.harvard.edu."

Comments

ads

[clovercase]

will there be ads for particle accelerators, scanning tunneling microscopes and tokamaks in the margins?

Re:ads

[IntelliTubbie]

will there be ads for particle accelerators, scanning tunneling microscopes and tokamaks in the margins?

Yes, but it'll be mixed in with ads for V14gr4, male "enhancement", and Nigerian wealth opportunities. When the scientists complain, the humanities faculty will protest that spam is a perfectly valid epistemology, and that the scientists' attempt to impose an orthodoxy of "truth" in advertising is simply a power grab to extend Western, white male hegemony. At which point, the scientists will defect to MIT's library down the street.

Cheers,
IT

Will it be like google scholar?

[baronben]

Ever since they introduced Google Scholar, I've been wanting something like this for my university. For those of you who don't know, finding articles on a subject can be a pain in the ass, as subjects are indexed on several different systems (depending on subject, date, and journal). None of them, not one, has a decent interface or gets results that are as good as google. Google scholar lets you search through academic texts, but its limited to what's available, usually working papers or pre-published drafts. If there is some way that google could team up with Academic printers to index as many journals and texts as possible, this would make everyone's life a lot better.

I think this is a great start, There's incredible profit here too, universities spend millions for catalogue systems. If I could use one interface to search for books, chapters, and articles on a subject, I could spend more time actually learning, and less time looking at the same damn "no results" page on GeoWeb. Grrrr.

The Fight against Plagiarism

[manmanic]

One reason why this is in the interest of big old universities like Harvard is that it will make it much easier to detect plagiarism in students' essays. If published books were included in Google's index, a plagiarism detection service like Copyscape would also be able to check whether content was lifted from printed material, as well as from the web.

University of California is anti-digital

[dananderson]

This is great. Compare this pro-digitalization attitude of Harvard, Stanford, and others with the University of California's (UC's) anti-digital position.

For books in Special Collections, they won't allow copies to be digitalized unless they are (1) paid a fee to scan the book (fair enough) and (2) paid a royalty to post the book to the web.

The royalty amounts to hundreds or thousands of dollars per book (about $100/page or image). This allows the libraries to act as a "profit center" for the universities. This policy applies to all UC campuses (I've tried UCB, UCLA, UCI, UCSD).

This is true even though the book is in the public domain (because they have physical possession and nobdy can make copies until you sign a license agreement). This is true even if you're using the book for non-commercial purposes (such as free posting to the web).

Something is wrong here. People donate to UC libraries (either books or money) for the public good. They don't donate so the library can start a business licensing public-domain books.

Despite that, I have been able to scan many books (by using books in open stacks or purchasing them). These books concern Yosemite history and are at http://www.yosemite.ca.us/history/

Text of Dec 13th Email

[olvr]

December 13, 2004

Dear Colleague,

I am writing today with news of an exciting new project within the Harvard libraries. As all of us know, Harvard's is the world's preeminent university library. Its holdings of over 15 million volumes are the result of nearly four centuries of thoughtful and comprehensive collecting. While those holdings are of primary importance to Harvard students and faculty, we have, for several years, been considering ways to make the collections more useful and accessible to scholars around the world. Now we are about to begin a project that can further that global goal-and, at the same time, can greatly enhance access to Harvard's vast library resources for our students and faculty.

We have agreed to a pilot project that will result in the digitization of a substantial number of volumes from the Harvard libraries. The pilot will give the University a great deal of important data on a possible future large-scale digitization program for most of the books in the Harvard collections. The pilot is a small but extremely significant first step that can ultimately provide both the Harvard community and the larger public with a revolutionary new information location tool to find materials available in libraries.

The pilot project will be done in collaboration with Google. The project will link Harvard's library collections with Google's resources and its cutting-edge technology. The pilot project, which will be announced officially tomorrow, is the result of more than a year of careful consultation at many levels of the University. We could not have achieved a meaningful pilot project without the efforts of the Harvard Corporation; the President, Provost, Chief Information Officer, and Office of General Counsel; the University Library Council; and senior managers within the College Library and the University Library.

A full description of the pilot program follows here, with further materials available on the Harvard home page tomorrow.

With best regards,
Sidney Verba
Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and
Director of the University Library


Project Description:
Harvard's Pilot Project with Google

Harvard University is embarking on a collaboration with Google that could harness Google's search technology to provide to both the Harvard community and the larger public a revolutionary new information location tool to find materials available in libraries. In the coming months, Google will collaborate with Harvard's libraries on a pilot project to digitize a substantial number of the 15 million volumes held in the University's extensive library system. Google will provide online access to the full text of those works that are in the public domain. In related agreements, Google will launch similar projects with Oxford, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library. As of 9 am on December 14, an FAQ detailing the Harvard pilot program with Google will be available at http://hul.harvard.edu.

The Harvard pilot will provide the information and experience on which the University can base a decision to launch a large-scale digitization program. Any such decision will reflect the fact that Harvard's library holdings are among the University's core assets, that the magnitude of those holdings is unique among university libraries anywhere in the world, and that the stewardship of these holdings is of paramount importance. If the pilot is deemed successful, Harvard will explore a long-term program with Google through which the vast majority of the University's library books would be digitized and included in Google's searchable database. Google will bear the direct costs of digitization in the pilot project.

By combining the skills and library collections of Harvard University with the innovative search skills and capacity of Google, a long-term program has the potential to create an important public good. According to Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers, "Harvard has the greate

Re:15 million volumes?

[pmc]

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with nearly 128 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves.

The British Library (www.bl.uk) has 150 million items (but fewer bookshelves) so the claim of "largest" is a bit dubious.

For /. readers 1 BL = 1.17 LoC