[Web4lib] University of California's 100 Libraries Join Google Book-Scanning Project

[Leslie Johnston]

At 05:10 PM 8/9/2006, Karen Coyle wrote:

>>Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told Cnet that while he was 
>>pleased the university will continue to work with the OCA, he 
>>criticized UC for "privatizing its library system" by agreeing to 
>>Google's limitations on distributing and sharing copies of 
>>digitized books. "They're effectively giving their library to a 
>>single corporation," he said. "Having a public institution decide 
>>to go with Google's restrictions doesn't help the idea of libraries 
>>being open in the future."
>
>This brings up one of the main questions on my mind: what does the 
>UC contract say about sharing the files that Google creates? 
>Fortunately, UC is a public institution subject to the California 
>public records act, so I'm hoping that we will soon be able to see a 
>copy of that contract, as we did with the Michigan one.
>
>There are other issues as well, including the quality control one 
>that we've brought up here from time to time. Google's goal is to 
>produce searchable text, and they can do so fairly quickly and 
>inexpensively by tolerating a certain amount of error. UC's goal 
>seems to be different -- there are hints that they are looking at 
>the Google solution as providing them with almost a substitute for 
>the book itself.* My fear is that all of this effort is going to 
>turn out to be just the digital version of microfiche -- good from a 
>technology point of view, but lousy for library users.

I had an offline conversation about this earlier this afternoon, and 
the goal for UC likely is a straightforward one -- get as many books 
digitized as possible through whichever partnerships present 
themselves to be able to create their own UC-wide digital book resource.

Sure, there are issues with books being available through multiple 
services, and Google being a closed service, and how any of this 
jibes with UC being a public institution.  But, in the end, UC is 
going to get a lot of its collections digitized and will be able to 
deliver them in as many ways as they can.

>kc
>
>* See comments by Schoettlander about preservation in Aug. 9 
>announcement 
>http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/2006/aug09.html, as well 
>as the comment from Hume, "Amongst them, of course, is the free and 
>unfettered full-text access we can provide to our public domain holdings."
>
>--
>-----------------------------------
>Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
>kcoyle at kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
>ph.: 510-540-7596
>fx.: 510-848-3913
>mo.: 510-435-8234