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UI Libraries Joins Google Book Search

The Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC)–a consortium of 12 research universities, including The University of Iowa–is announcing that its members have entered into an agreement with Google to become partners in the Google Book Search project. This means that Google will work with the libraries at all of the CIC institutions to digitize distinctive portions of their collections, making those works searchable and easier to access, and preserving many materials that are fragile or deteriorating.

google_small.jpgOver the next several years, Google will scan up to 10 million volumes from the CIC libraries, including public domain and in-copyright works, within the guidelines of copyright law. Public domain materials will be viewable, searchable, and downloadable in their entirety. For materials under copyright protection, a search will result in basic information (such as book title and author’s name), plus a snippet of text surrounding the search term. Users seeking further information from the text will be directed to avenues for library access or purchase.

This agreement anticipates the CIC’s intention to create a shared digital repository, so that each university can “deposit” its digitized public domain files into a commonly funded and managed data storage system. Eventually, this will give students and faculty convenient, desktop access to a vast array of public domain materials from across our 12 institutions.

Access to information and research materials is crucial to the teaching and research missions of a public research university like The University of Iowa, and making those materials available to the public is a very important part of our service mission. This partnership with Google and with our fellow CIC institutions represents an exciting opportunity to take a giant step forward in all of those areas.

We encourage you to learn more about the CIC and about today’s announcement by visiting the CIC web site at http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/digitalbooks.