Google Partners with Libraries in Massive Digitization Project
In a move likely to have major ramifications for the library world, Google announced December 14 that it would embark on an ambitious project to digitally scan books from the collections of five major research libraries and make them searchable online.
The libraries involved are those of Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford Universities; the University of Michigan; and New York Public Library. Michigan and Stanford will allow all their holdings—some 7 million titles at each institution—to be digitized, while Harvard is limiting its participation to 40,000 randomly selected titles in what it views as a pilot program. Oxford will contribute its 19th-century collections, and NYPL will offer a portion of its public domain titles.
Once the works are entered into Google’s database, searchers will be able to access the full text of older books that are in the public domain. For titles still under copyright, only short excerpts will be made available online. Each library will receive a copy of the database Google creates from its holdings, which it can make available to its users.
Stanford’s books will be scanned at Google’s nearby headquarters in Mountain View, California, while the company will establish remote scanning operations at Harvard and Michigan. The December 14 New York Times said that while Google officials refused to discuss the price tag for the project, some involved estimated that it would cost $10 to scan each of the 15 million books and documents set for digitization, and that the process could take a decade or more. The company raised billions of dollars with an initial public stock offering last summer.
Initial reaction in the library community ranged from enthusiasm to dread: Some see Google’s announcement as accelerating an inevitable transformation to an increasingly digital environment, while others voiced concerns ranging from the commercial nature of the enterprise to the likely quality and usefulness of the search results.
However, Walt Crawford, senior research analyst at the Research Libraries Group, disputed naysayers who view Google’s involvement as presaging a day when users can bypass libraries altogether. “It only means the end of libraries for librarians who always think the sky is falling,” he told American Libraries.
Posted December 17, 2004.
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