[WEB4LIB] RE: Library News from Google ... *and* UM! (fwd)

[Karen Coyle]

>From the Chronicle story:

1. Understatement of the year:
  "The trickiest issue is copyright."
They're going to begin with public domain works, but copyrighted works
will also be scanned, only their full text will not be available through
Google. I'm not sure this passes the fair use test, and obviously
publishers aren't either because...

2. "Google Print, which started in October, initially invited only
publishers, rather than libraries, to join. Susan Wojcicki, director of
product management for Google, said that the Google Print project would
lead to an increase in book sales because it would show readers what the
volumes contain. "For publishers, we believe that this will be
beneficial," she said."
But the subtext may be that publishers didn't see it as beneficial and
weren't willing to let their books be scanned, which is why Google
turned to libraries. 

It would be interesting to know the overlap between Google Print and
Amazon's "Search Inside the Book." Also, I haven't heard any updates
about the success of the Amazon service. I recall that at the beginning
books with full text were selling better than those without it, but that
was in the first weeks of the service. I know that publishers were not
giving Amazon all of their titles to scan, only select ones, and I
wonder if new ones are being added and at what rate.
-- 
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Karen Coyle
Digital Library Specialist
http://www.kcoyle.net
Ph: 510-540-7596 Fax: 510-848-3913
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