University of Virginia Joins Google Book Search

-- Library Journal, 11/17/2006

The University of Virginia (UVA) and Google Wednesday announced that UVA is the ninth partner in the Google Books Library Project. Under the agreement, Google will digitize "selected portions" of the UVA Library's collections, just as it has agreed to do with other public universities, like the University of Michigan. Diane Walker, deputy university librarian, told LJ that Google's scanning will begin with public domain materials, but will eventually grow to include selected materials still under copyright. As for the university's special collections, "that is something we hope to do down the road," Walker said, but she noted the scanning would begin with the book collection.

Walker said that the university was "comfortable" with Google's argument that its scanning for indexing purposes is covered by fair use. In a news release, UVA officials stressed the program was designed to comply with copyright law and stressed that authors or presses can opt out of the scanning if they wish. As usual under the Google plan, UVA's public domain books will be freely viewable while only "snippets" of in-copyright books will be available. The UVA Library should be fertile ground for Google: with more than five million volumes, 17 million manuscripts, rare books, and archives, the highly-regarded library has particular strengths in literature and American history.

The program will also be a boost for UVA, one of the nation's long-acknowledged leaders in digital initiatives, including the successful e-text center, which has made thousands of public domain books available online. Walker said the agreement with Google will allow UVA to more quickly realize its digital ambitions. "We started the e-text center in 1992 and found we could create tens of thousands of digital editions," Walker said, "but not hundreds of thousands."