In Wide-Ranging Interview, Google Talks Books

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Andrew Albanese & Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 03/13/2009

Google: best outcome for all
Library voice: mainly as consumers of content
Pricing issues unresolved

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(This article first appeared in the March 12 issue of the LJ Academic Newswire.)

What might Google’s massive book scanning efforts mean for your library? This week LJ editors were invited to Google’s New York office to discuss the company’s project—both its publisher partner program and, of course, its groundbreaking Google Book Search class action settlement with publishers.

The wide-ranging interview with Dan Clancy, engineering director in charge of Google Book Search, and Tom Turvey, Google director of content partnerships, will run in the May 1 issue of Library Journal, but we wanted to provide some excerpts from the discussion, which ranged over pricing issues and access for libraries and consumers, the legal settlement’s impact on orphan works and the public domain, and how the program would actually translate from paper to practice once—or perhaps if—approved.

“I think that many of the biggest challenges are behind us,” Clancy noted. “Following approval, we don’t think it will be so long before some of the products and services will be available to users.” (He also appeared on a panel at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting.)

Best outcome for everyone?

Since the settlement was announced there has been significant criticism suggesting that the deal sacrificed quality for expediency.

Given the deal’s lengthy negotiations, the need to set up a Book Rights Registry to administer the deal, and major efforts still to come in implementing and improving the settlement pending court approval, perhaps expedient isn’t quite accurate. “For us, we didn’t view this as expedience,” Clancy said. “[Harvard University librarian] Bob Darnton wrote his piece [critiquing the settlement for, among other things, a potential monopoly on books], and talked about an ideal solution,” he added, “[but] we just never saw that future coming to bear.”

Of course, Clancy said Google was confident that their initial “fair use” claim would have prevailed—eventually. “We strongly believed in our fair use position,” he said, "but we didn’t start this project to win a court case on fair use. I can honestly say that the settlement was completely driven by what we felt was in the end better for everyone and in particular, users.”

In addition to the settlement, meanwhile, Turvey pointed out that on the partnership side, Google has over 20,000 publishing partners globally, and over one million books, including all of the major houses in New York, since Random House joined last year.

Reassurance for libraries?
Libraries are important both in supplying books to the project and as consumers, but librarians are concerned they’re not going to have a voice. What, Google was asked, can you say to reassure libraries?

"Some of our library partners were obviously very involved," Clancy noted, adding that many aspects of the project are "in there because of their perspective going forward." He added that an authorization agreement, the subject of the settlement, "is usually not the forum by which aspects of the project you’re selling into marketplace are defined."

"Libraries are going to have a very strong voice," he said. "Anyone who thinks libraries are wilting flowers are sorely mistaken....This is a market that’s challenging, because libraries have a lot of options… so we feel they’re going to have a very strong voice in terms of the product."

Pricing issues
If the price is not appropriate, he noted, universities "can choose not to subscribe," Clancy said. He suggested that "the existence of a robust consumer model" in general drives prices down. "We think it has to be a price point where schools feel like it’s delivering value commensurate with the price they have to pay."

What are the other options? Certainly an online preview--"free preview of books is very much in the public interest," Clancy said--as well as use of interlibrary loan.

Turvey said that no pricing could be addressed until after the settlement but that Google was looking at various models for academic libraries based on FTE users.

Public libraries
And what about public libraries? That remains a more complicated issue, given the variety of such libraries and Google's willingness to provide free access to Google Book Search via only one terminal. Clancy acknowleged that the one terminal "is at least a start for libraries that don't have funds for this." Still, he said, pricing "would be similar to other products out there" and that it would be set "with a sense of the community it’s serving."

While the settlement agreement cites at least one public access terminal in public libraries, the registry, he noted, can authorize additional access points. "People say 'you haven’t necessarily gotten it right,'" Clancy acknowledged, pointing to the company's ongoing exploration of the issue. "This is a very different resource."

From PW Daily: market "substantial"
Meanwhile, sister publication PW Daily quotes Google executive David Drummond and Bertelsmann’s Richard Sarnoff as unwilling to predict what the size of the institutional market will be for the database of digital books Google will create once the settlement is approved by the judge, although Drummond said he believes it will be “substantial” by 2015.