Google's Library Links: Old Books
HarperCollins to provide its own scans; Google gives $3M to LC
By Andrew Albanese, Norman Oder, Michael Rogers -- Library Journal, 1/15/2006
Librarians and library users alike are starting to use Google Book Search (formerly Google Print) the way they use Google. But does Google Book Search let its users easily find a library version of a book? Not unless the book is out of copyright. Until early December, Google didn't even explain in its FAQ that its “Find It in a Library” link only applied to public domain books scanned from libraries, published before 1923, rather than the much larger (as of now) collection of current books submitted for scanning by publishers.
Google spokesman Nate Tyler said, “We are not showing this link on books that are part of the publisher program, but we may do so in the future.” Why the delay? “I guess that we're trying to create a tool for publishers to sell more books online,” said Tyler. Google clarified its FAQ after LJ inquired. Chip Nilges, OCLC's VP for new services, said, “We'd, of course, like them to appear on every book in the Google Book Search program,” but added that it was Google's call. OCLC publishes a standard linking syntax for Open WorldCat that anyone can use to embed a link to the “find in a library” service.
HarperCollins goes digital
On the heels of recently announced digital initiatives from Random House, Amazon.com, and Yahoo, HarperCollins declared that it was soliciting offers from vendors to convert some 20,000 books in its catalog into digital editions. Group president Brian Murray told reporters the company hoped to have a few thousand books available by late 2006, to be crawled by any search engine.
Google, LC, and Michigan
Meanwhile, Google has been building some bridges, giving the Library of Congress (LC) $3 million to fund its World Digital Library, a project to mount primary materials from libraries and museums on the Internet. Librarian of Congress James Billington said the World Digital Library will be reminiscent of LC's current American Memory Project, which offers electronic access to historical artifacts such as the papers of Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson and Civil War photos.
The University of Michigan has become the most ambitious participant in Google's digitization project, and the university library's Google point man, John Price Wilkin, is on the Board of Directors of the Michigan Library Consortium (MLC), which has more than 650 libraries of all types. So perhaps it's not surprising that the MLC board has adopted a resolution supporting Google's digitization project. “We didn't want to sit on the sidelines anymore,” board chair Christine Berro said in a statement.
