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Google To Resume Scanning Books

Posted by Zonk on from the love-of-the-digital-printed-word dept.

SenseOfHumor writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google will resume scanning copyrighted books from Stanford and Univ of Michigan libraries. Let the battle resume!" From the article: "It isn't known just what percentage of library holdings fall into the category of being in copyright but out of print. About 18% of the books held by the libraries working with Google were printed prior to 1923 and are therefore in the public domain, according to an analysis by the Online Computer Library Center, a Dublin, Ohio, nonprofit library cooperative. An unknown percentage of the rest still are protected by copyright, depending on whether it was renewed. Google's resumption of its scanning of copyrighted works comes amid heated debate in the library community over participation in the program."

3 of 257 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm. by daniil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    FTA: "I feel that this is a potential disaster on several levels," said Michael Gorman, president of the American Library Association and university librarian at California State University, Fresno. "They are reducing scholarly texts to paragraphs. The point of a scholarly text is they are written to be read sequentially from beginning to end, making an argument and engaging you in dialogue."

    The sad thing is, scholarly texts are so abundant nowadays that it's neigh impossible to keep oneself current with all the new things published. Already there are magazines that only (or mostly) contain abstracts or reviews of new dissertations and articles. I fail to see how Google Print is a greater disaster than this. If anything, it'll only improve the situation.

    --
    Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
  2. Did I miss something? by Descalzo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Assuming Google won't make these scanned copies available to everyone to just read on their Palm Pilot, what is the big deal? I would think that it would be to the copyright owner's benefit to have their text in a database to be searched. If Google has my book in its database, and someone searches for text that happens to be included in my book, doesn't that make it more likely someone will buy it?

    Seriously, though, I feel like I'm missing something here. What is it?

    --
    I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
  3. spread information by dingDaShan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I currently attend the University of Michigan, and have encountered much frustration in tracking down books. The university has several libraries and finding some books is nearly impossible. Additionally, the University has old collections and manuscripts that are barely indexed in the University's system. For the purposes of research, scanning the books is a dream come true. Searching for keywords, the ability to quickly find books, and the ability to view old manuscripts that one would normally need to be present at the library (and under supervision) to view. The copyright issue is important, but the books that are in public domain (primary sources especially) should definitely be scanned. As for the copyrighted books themselves, Google does not allow the full book to be viewed. If anything, Google advertises for these books. For a student such as myself, I would not buy the book as it is, so what is the harm?