News updates on Google Books:
The American Library Association (ALA) Office for Information Technology Policy has launched Google Books Settlement. It contains the settlement documents and a blog to track new developments and commentary. Included on the site is a 2 Page Super Simple Summary.
Librarian Opposes Google’s Library Fees, All Things Considered, NPR, February 21, 2009
Google wants to give you access to its huge database of scanned, out-of-print books, but the company is going to charge for it. Robert Darnton, head librarian at Harvard University, says the deal violates a basic American principle — that knowledge should be free and accessible to all.
Rick Johnson, Free (or Fee) to All?, Library Journal, December 23, 2008.
In 2004, when five libraries inked the first book-scanning agreements with Google, it seemed like the company was offering a public service. Google’s plan to digitize the great libraries of the world conjured images of a vast, freely accessible Internet public library, bringing together corporate capital and vast library collections, with the potential to carry knowledge off the shelf virtually into every home and workplace. In the course of Google’s effort to bring library collections to the web, however, something quite different than an Internet public library has emerged.
Francine Fialkoff, Google Deal or Rip-Off? Librarians need to protect the public interest, Library Journal, December 15, 2008.
An editorial. Excerpt: One public access terminal per public library building. Institutional database subscriptions for academic and public libraries that secure once freely available material in a contractual lockbox, which librarians already know too well from costly e-journal and e-reference database deals. No remote access for public libraries without approval from the publisher/author Book Rights Registry, set up to administer the program. And no copying or pasting from that institutional database, though you can print pages for a fee. Of course, you can always purchase the book, too. Those are just a few of the choice tidbits from the 200-page settlement in the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Authors Guild three-year-old suit against Google, drawn from Jonathan Band’s “Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement.” Band’s report was commissioned by the American Library Association and the Association of Research Libraries….
