Nothing’s Ever Good Enough for You Uppity Harvard Folk, Is It?
by John Paczkowski
Posted on November 3, 2008 at 8:37 AM PT
Harvard University, which eagerly signed onto Google’s controversial book scanning project in 2005, isn’t so keen on the project now that the company’s agreed to settle the lawsuits questioning its legality. Troubled by uncertainties in the settlement, Harvard will not participate in Google’s in-copyright book scanning effort–even if Google’s recent $125 million settlement with the Authors Guild and an alliance of five major publishers is approved.
“As we understand it, the settlement contains too many potential limitations on access to and use of the books by members of the higher education community and by patrons of public libraries,” University Library Director Robert C. Darnton said in a message to library staff. “The settlement provides no assurance that the prices charged for access will be reasonable, especially since the subscription services will have no real competitors [and] the scope of access to the digitized books is in various ways both limited and uncertain.”
Which is not to say that Harvard doesn’t believe that universal access to the world’s books is mission-critical for universities. It clearly does, and will continue to work with the company to digitize books that have fallen out of copyright. But until the quality of the book scans improves (see sample below) and Google (GOOG) sets a clear pricing scheme, the university can support, Harvard will be providing the company only with out-of-copyright works pulled from its Depository collection.
Comments
I don’t think Harvard ever “eagerly signed on” to Google’s book scanning project. Their announced cooperation was always very limited, including only items clearly in the public domain. They aren’t retracting any of their cooperation; they are only not expanding their cooperation. It’s not clear that it really matters at all, as Google has plenty of access through other partners to recent works. The unique holdings at Harvard would mostly be older works anyway.
Posted by David desJardins at November 3rd, 2008 at 9:34 amI know this is heresy, but most of the good stuff that has ever been written is out of copyright and out of print.
Google kindly points users who wish to buy ANY book to Amazon even for books that haven’t been in print since the 1800s. Eventually someone, Amazon or otherwise, will make money on this by offering to covert those PDF files to bound hardcopies for anyone that wants one.
Our short attention span for “bestsellers” will eventually kill the marketplace for book in print other than in an on-demand basis.
As Martha Stuart would say: It’s a good thing.
Posted by Mac Beach at November 3rd, 2008 at 12:59 pmI know that one day Google will see the same stars I do. This book endeavor could easily be a video game endeavor.
Posted by terri boothe at November 3rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm