Libraries are institutions unlike any others. They have served as architectural masterpieces, intellectual focal points, and keepers of the written word, from the mass-produced to the obscure. But with the rise of Google's Book Search project, which has already digitized seven million books, rifling through yellowed volumes might be a thing of the past.
"Our mission is to make the world's information more accessible," says Jennie Johnson, a spokesperson for Google. "The fact of the matter is, most of the world's information is not contained in web pages, it's not on the Internet. It's offline, in books, magazines, newspapers, photographs-a range of physical formats. And if we want to make the world's information searchable, we have to bring that offline information online."
Settling down with Google Book Search
The road to universal online information access hasn't been an easy one. In September 2005, the Authors Guild launched a lawsuit against Google for copyright infringement. In October, five major members of the Association of American Publishers-McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Penguin Group, John Wiley & Sons, and Simon & Schuster-filed another lawsuit that challenged Google's digitization and dissemination of copyrighted materials without permission.
"We needed to vindicate the proposition that when someone wants to make use of someone else's copyrighted work, they don't get to go ahead and use it in a way that implicates the right of copyright, and then wait until the copyright owner finds out," says Allan Adler, vice president of legal and government affairs for the AAP, which financed the publishers involved in the second lawsuit.
"We [were] told by Google at the outset that Google [was] going to reproduce those works in their entirety unless-and until-the rights holders told them they couldn't. If this had become an accepted way of dealing with copyrighted works, then the right of copyright would not mean very much."
After years of discussion, a settlement agreement was announced on October 28, 2008, with terms that could resolve both lawsuits. Google will pay a total of $125 million (U.S.) to cover claims, legal fees, and the cost of establishing a Book Rights Registry, which will make it easier for rights holders to monitor the status of their works in Google Book Search in the future.
Right now, materials that appear in Google Book Search were contributed from publishing partners or the public domain. In addition, searches show snippets of in copyright books and link to places those books can be obtained.
If the settlement agreement is approved, that access will continue for unsubscribed users and those located outside of the United States. Additional materials, including in copyright materials from libraries working with Google, will also be accessible. Depending on the text, users may be able to view 20 per cent of the work instead of a snippet. In addition, public and institutional libraries will receive public access licenses, which will allow them to access the full text of certain materials.
Turning tomes into terabytes
There are two parts to Google Book Search: materials that come from their Library Project, and materials from the Partner Program.
Content from libraries appears on Google as part of the aptly named Library Project. Scanned books from libraries that were in copyright, but which Google did not obtain the permission of the rights holders to digitize, are covered under the settlement.
The digitization of millions of books, particularly rare or out-of-print books, will give wide-ranging access to works that previously might have been read by only a handful of people.
"Digitization is good because it gives better access [and is] better for storage, better for preservation. So libraries want more digitization," says France Bouthillier, the director of information studies at McGill. "The only concern from the librarian's perspective is really to make sure that what is digitized is really accessible publicly."
One question that arises in any discussion of electronic books is whether readers will enjoy reading off a screen in the same way they relish reading a printed copy. In this case, the issue runs even deeper, as for many rare books the object itself is an important part of the experience. However, Bouthillier believes that even a restricted reading is better than no access at all.
"Some of the books that are being digitized for the Google project are very difficult to access physically because books can be damaged … but when you cannot even have access to the print version I guess it's better to have access to one that's digitized," says Bouthillier.
The Partner Program: disregarding traditional revenue structures since 2005
While libraries are a prime source of material for Google Book Search, there is another: Google's Partner Program, which allows publishers to include their texts-frequently works which are in copyright-in the search. The program has over 20,000 publishers signed up to date.
Members of the program can allow some, or all, of their in copyright works to be digitized by Google in return for 63 per cent of revenues from Google's commercial use of those books, such as from ads displayed on the page. This type of agreement is not standard in the publishing world, where the type of work in question usually determines terms and discounts between publishers and sellers.
"The trade market typically has deeper discounts and sells for less to booksellers, but a lot of our books are not trade books … We have different rates depending on the customer and the type of book," says Lynn Fisher, vice-president of scholarly publishing at University of Toronto Press, which is part of the Partner Program.
As a Canadian publisher and member of the Program, UTP is not directly involved in the settlement, but Fisher is already looking towards the future.
"The complete impact of the Google settlement on the university press world or on publishing in general is still a bit unknown … It has the possibility of having a very broad reach for individuals and libraries," she says. "It's pretty big muscle to have our content out there on Google and available through this book registry."
The future of information? Just Google it
With the court's final decision on the settlement to be determined starting June 11, and the Book Search and its associated programs just revving up, the potential breadth of Google's digitization seems endless.
"It has the potential to have very wide ranging implications," says Erin Finlay, legal counsel for Access Copyright, a Canadian group which is helping to provide notice to rights holders [affected] by the settlement. "People tend to think it's just a U.S. issue, but the fact they are dealing with works published throughout the world means it has a real potential to affect Canadian publishers, Canadian authors, Canadian rights holders."
"It's so new and it's so different that I don't think we can know [what the impact will be] yet," she adds. "It could be a great thing, it could be a bad thing."
But regardless, Google will continue to digitize works.
"We think of this in a very long-term way," says Johnson. "We've said we want to scan all the world's books, and that's what we mean."
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