IndustryA Look Back as Google’s Library Project Passes the One Year Mark

A Look Back as Google's Library Project Passes the One Year Mark

Tomorrow, the Google Library Project will be one year old. It’s been quite a year of news and controversy. Here’s a link to our first SearchDay article about the Google Library Project from December 14, 2004. In this article, I made sure to mention other digitization projects like Project Gutenberg that have been around since 1971.

What’s crucial to remember is that Google Print (recently renamed Google Book Search) itself was around before Google’s announcement to digitize the full or partial holdings of five large university libraries.

Let’s review.

Google Print for books (materials direct from publishers) was opened “widely To publishers” on October 6, 2004. However, the existence of Google Print goes back even before that to December 17, 2003, when Google began offering book searches. The original Google Book search indexed, “only a small excerpt from each book, typically taken from the inside cover, jacket reviews, author biographies or the book’s introduction.

To this day, Google Book Search (the material direct from publishers) and the Google Library Project are frequently confused. SEW BLOG has tried to make the differences clear since day one. Recently, Danny did a great job of explaining the important differences in his post: Once Again — The Difference Between Google Print & Google Library. This post also contains links to many other articles about the project, digitization, and opinion about copyright issues.

The remainder of this post will offer a few key posts about the project (yes, I could have included more), a timeline of sorts, from the past year, along with links to some other Google Print/Book Search/Library Project related documents.

+ Questions & Answers Recap On Google Library
This Info Today article by Barbara Quint is loaded with details about the project.

+ France, Google & The Need for Digitization Project Cooperation

+ Copyright Questions On Google Digitization Project

+ Some Publishers Not Happy With Google’s Library Digitization Program

+ Google Library Digitization Agreement With University Of Michigan Now Available

+ The Digitization Of The Library

+ More On Publisher Concerns On Google Library Project

+ Google Gives Publishers Opt-Out From Library Scanning Project; One Group Still Not Happy

+ More Publishing Trade Groups Weigh In On Changes to Google’s Library Scanning Project

+ Legal Experts Say Google Library Digitization Project Likely OK; Will It Revolve Around Snippets?

+ Breaking Down The Google Print 5 Libraries
An article from Digital Libraries.

+ Google’s Library Scanning Project Heads to Court

+ A New Alternative to Google Print
Say hello to the Open Content Alliance!

+ Google Print Press Review & Just A Bit About Search Inside the Book
This post includes a link to Eric Schmidt’s op/ed column in the Wall St. Journal.

+ Association of American Publishers Sues Google over Library Digitization Plan

+ Great Google Print Controversy Bibliography
Includes link to, “The Google Print Controversy: A Bibliography” by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. Impressive!!!

+ Microsoft Announces MSN Book Search; Joins Open Content Alliance

+ Google Gears Up to Resume Book Scanning

+ Google Print Now Publishing Out-Of-Copyright Works Gained Through Library Scanning Program

Yes, it has been quite a year and I could have listed more reports. I’m sure year two will have as many, if not, news stories, court hearings and events as the The Google Library Project’s first 365 days.

Postscipt:
I’ve recently posted about two other services, currently available, that offer the full text (no limit on how much you can read) called ebrary and NetLibrary. Looking for public domain full text books? Visit, “Public Domain Books: More than 25,000 Full Text Books in a Single Database.”

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our SEW Forums thread, Google’s Library Project One Year Old Already.

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