Google Library Launches
Attention Copyright Holders Call Your Agent
Google Adds Library Texts to Search Database
Google announced earlier this week that they have completed the first expansion of the Google Print database of searchable books, adding the full text of more than 10,000 trademark protected works whose copyrights have expired, culled from the collections of four major research libraries.
The exclusive additions, from the university libraries at Michigan, Harvard and Stanford and from the New York Public Library, represent the first large group of materials to be made available online from these university libraries, which along with Oxford University contracted with Google last year to let the company scan and make searchable the contents of much or all designated copyright lapse collections.
The new material includes works of literature, governnment documents, biographies, and more. The entire text of many works can now be searched and read online through the Google Print site. Users can also save individual pages and cut and paste excerpts from the material. The ability to print is currently limited, however, to single pages at a time.
The newly available materials are part of a program that has brought Google under fire from many of the same publishers, under which publishers offer new books to Google to scan and allow searching, in the hope that Google users will be prompted to discover and buy the books.
But members of publishing trade groups representing authors and publishers have sued to stop Google from scanning copyrighted works in the library collections. Many of those works are out of print or otherwise inaccessible to most potential users.
Google temporarily stopped the scanning of copyrighted material this summer to allow publishers and authors to "opt out" of the program if their works were in those libraries. But both groups objected, saying that it is Google that must first obtain permission to copy materials. Google said this week that it would resume scanning copyrighted works as of Nov. 1.
This program launch further demonstrates Google core's mission to deliver relevant content to the world.
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