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June 9, 2007

Google To Offer Digitalized Text Books For Big Ten Schools

In an interesting move, Google has partnered with the universities of the Big Ten to offer digitalized versions of text books, according to a CNN report.

Apart from the impact this will have in bonding college students with Google, the integration with universities, faculty as well as students, should have major longterm benefits for Google.

Harvard and California have also signed up to be added to this endeavor.

Posted by aussiewebmaster at 11:19 AM | Permalink

January 19, 2007

Google Courts Book Publishers, Librarians

Google held an all-day love-fest for book publishers yesterday at the New York Public Library. The grandiosely named Google Unbound came complete with an all-star cast of Web luminaries: Wired magazine's Chris Anderson (author of "The Long Tail"); author and marketing guru Seth Godin; Cory Doctorow, author, BoingBoing co-editor and USC Fulbright Chair; and Tim O'Reilly.

Speakers spent the day trying to persuade publishers that Google could be their friend, and not a book-stealing upstart that just won't follow their antiquated publishing standards.

Reaching out to another niche audience, Google this week also launched a new Librarian Central Blog, to provide resources for this key constituency. Phil Bradley details some initial reactions from librarians, and says he's not sure Google is thinking of today's librarians as "dynamic, forward-looking, and technologically attuned," as many see themselves to be.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:05 AM | Permalink

December 14, 2006

Google Launches Patent Search

Google has launched a new search engine for finding U.S. patents going back more than 200 years, Google announced on its blog. Danny has some details at Search Engine Land, and Gary Price shares a roundup of patent search options.

Google Patent Search uses the same technology behind Google Book Search, with similar ability to perform full-text searches, scroll through pages, and zoom in on text and images. An advanced search feature lets users search by criteria like patent number, inventor and filing date.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink

November 30, 2006

Yahoo Turns Down Google's Request For Information On Book Search

The NY Times reports that Yahoo has recently rejected Google's subpoena for help with the Google Book Search project legal woes. Reportedly, Yahoo turned down Google's request for similar reasons mentioned by Amazon when they turned down the same request. If you are interested, I have posted the full court filing at my server as a PDF download.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:11 AM | Permalink

November 22, 2006

Google Book Search Catches Victorian Plagiarists

We tend to assume that plagiarism is a reasonably modern day phenomena but a fascinating article from Paul Collins "Dead Plagiarists Society" illustrates that is not always the case. In fact it would appear that Victorian authors stole work from earlier authors who in turn had stolen it from even earlier ones, and the article gives some nice examples of this.

More importantly, it provides a fascinating use for Google Book Search, which I'd certainly not considered before, and it's actually a rather interesting experiment - take a partial sentence, plug it into book search and add words onto the end, and very quickly you arrive at a short number of results, allowing researchers to get a very clear view of the 'history' of a small passage of text. This in turn could then be expanded to provide an insight into a particular authors reading and research habits. Consequently we can all start to play literary detective quickly and easily; now where did I put my Sherlock Holmes?

Posted by Phil Bradley at 7:46 PM | Permalink

October 30, 2006

Judge To Rule By End Of Year On Kinderstart Case

Reuters reports that Judge Jeremy Fogel said he will take until the end of this year to rule on the Kinderstart case. The case was about how Kinderstart's ranking and PageRank fell and Kinderstart sued Google on numerous counts for the ranking drop. The judge recently said, "Assuming Google is saying that KinderStart's Web site isn't worth seeing. Why can't they say that? That's my question." So he will consider this and other questions in his ruling.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:03 AM | Permalink

October 25, 2006

Amazon Turns Down Google's Request For Information On Book Search

Business Week reports that Amazon has turned down Google's request for information to help in it book scanning lawsuit. Amazon responded to Google's subpoena saying, that it would make Amazon's trade secrets public and it was "overly broad and unduly burdensome" on Amazon. In short, it is Amazon's way of telling Google to stop looking over their shoulder and work it out yourself.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:29 AM | Permalink

October 19, 2006

Publishers & Authors Consolidate Lawsuits Against Google

MarketWatch reports that a judge has consolidated two different cases against Google to make the process quicker and more "streamlined." Book publishers and book authors have joined together to battle Google on the legal from for copyright infringement allegations over Google's Book Search Project.

Postscript: Steve Bryant at eWeek reports that the Authors Guild v. Google case is postponed six months to January 2008. Steve said, "Doesn't that mean that Google, in the meantime, will continue to operate Google Books as normal, which is exactly what the Authors Guild wants to prevent?"

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 2:15 PM | Permalink

October 12, 2006

University of Wisconsin-Madison Joins Google Book Search Project

University of Wisconsin-Madison is the next university to join Google's Book Search Project. The University has one of the largest collections of historical documents and books in the US, accounting for about 7.2 million holdings. The University houses the famous Wisconsin Historical Society Library which is also part of this project. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has their release here and Google has their release here and Reuters has their article here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:35 AM | Permalink

October 6, 2006

Google Print Helping Book Sales

Despite a skeptical publishing community some publishers are seeing increased sales from Google's book scanning project. Reuters quotes several publishers as seeing increased sales. And here are the top 10 books on Google Book Search.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 11:59 AM | Permalink

October 5, 2006

Google To Subpoena Yahoo, Microsoft For Info To Help In It Book Scanning Lawsuit

Just in from Bloomberg, Google to Subpoena Yahoo, Microsoft on Book Scanning covers how Google hopes that gaining information from rival book scanning programs will help it defend itself in copyright lawsuits over its own scanning program. From the story:

Google, which doesn't disclose how many books it has scanned, also wants to know the title, authors and copyright status of books already offered through competitors' book projects, according to the documents.

The right to subpoena has been granted, but information is to be kept confidential and used only in the litigation.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 8:09 PM | Permalink

October 4, 2006

The Google Literacy Project

Reuters reports that Google, in conjunction with LitCam and UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning, has formed The Literacy Project. The site, hosted at Google.com, brings together Google Book Search, Google Scholar, Google Video, Google Maps, Blogger, and Groups into one landing page. The site was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair with hopes to combat global illiteracy. Nikesh Arora, vice president of Google's European operations said, "Google's business was born out of a desire to help people find information."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:31 AM | Permalink

September 26, 2006

First Non English University To Join Google Book Search Project

Reuters reports that The Complutense University of Madrid, a Spanish university, is to join the Google Book Search scan project as the first library to join in a "non-English-speaking country." The Complutense University's library is the second largest in the country, with 3 million works.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:17 AM | Permalink

September 21, 2006

KinderStart Issues An Amended Complaint Against Google

Eric Goldman wrote that KinderStart has issued a 63 page second amended complaint against Google. KinderStart lost their first case against Google back in July of this year - that case was, in my opinion, ridiculous. This new complaint is even worse. The 43(B)log summarizes the complaints, calling many of them "incomprehensible." Eric Goldman says "I expect Google will file a motion to dismiss, which the judge will grant, at least in part (at minimum, to eliminate the Violation of Free Speech claim). I expect Google to go on the counter-offensive and renew its anti-SLAPP motions."

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:51 AM | Permalink

Google Book Search Adds "Find It At The Library" Link

The Google Book Search blog announced a feature named "Find this book in a library." How does it work? I went to a book and clicked on the Find this book in a library, which takes you to the OCLC Worldcat. Then you type in your postal code, state, province or country. I entered in a NYC zip code, 10010 into the search box. Then I clicked on the first result and ended up at this page that showed me that the status is available. More details at Google Book Search Help Center.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:18 AM | Permalink

September 13, 2006

Google: Banning Books In The US Is Bad; Censorship In China, Not So Much

Google's blogging (and here) about how it is supporting the 25th anniversary of the American Library Association's Banned Book Week by posting information about novels that have been challenged or banned from being in libraries within the United States. That's great, but it also rings hollow given Google's support of wide-spread censorship in China.

Consider some of the quotes the ALA has put out to promote its anti-banning campaign:

"Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment." â€”Library Bill of Rights

"We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources." â€”ALA Code of Ethics

Google's a library resource, make no doubt about it. Pick a librarian, and they'll tell you Google is a key resource they use. Not the only resource, but an important one -- and one that I doubt they feel should be censored to the degree that Google does in China.

Back to Google's support of Banned Book Week, its new Explore Banned Books page has links to information about 42 classic books that have been banned or challenged over time. Here's a recent article on banned books in China.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:36 AM | Permalink

August 30, 2006

Download Books For Free From Google Book Search

Google is now offering free, downloadable versions of public domain books that you can find in Google Book search. Unfortunately, there's no way to browse through a directory of books that are available. However, you can keyword search for them easily, sort of.

On the Google Book Search home page, you'll see two options below the search box. By default, "All books" is filled in. Change this to "Full view books." Now search for something you are interested in, Dante's Inferno, an example both the AP and Bloomberg cite in stories about the new feature.

When the results appear, click on one of the books that comes up, such as this one. Over on the right-hand side, in the column just below the title, you should see a "Download" button. That will let you download the book in PDF format.

Here's the problem. Some Full View books are full view for reading online but not for download, and Google doesn't make it easy to narrow in on only the downloadable ones. For example, here's a search for mars. Here's the first book listed. No downloadable option is offered.

Since Google seems to be making downloadable versions of anything that's out of copyright -- and since those are books published before 1923 in the US -- you might try an advanced search for books before that date.

For instance, here's a search for all books about Mars for the years 0 through 1922 (FYI, I did try to search for books older than 0 AD, but the system doesn't support negative/BC dates, as far as I can tell).

Overall, this is a nice feature to have. Next time I'm heading on a trip, I might try downloading some PDF books to read for the journey. But that leads me to improvements I want to make it easier to find good books:

Give me a Google Zeitgeist for book search, or something like Google Music Trends. I want to know what people are reading via Google Book Search. What's the most downloaded book and so on, especially in different categories?
Provide a "Downloadable Books" search option, in addition to Full View, so I know I'm absolutely only going to get back results that match what I'm looking for.
Give me better ranking of downloadable books. Somehow I think there are much better popular interest books that could be coming up tops for a search on [mars] than I was finding in my example above.

Looking for more info? From Google's help pages, Why is the Download button only available on some books? explains that only public domain books get the download option right now, and even some of those have yet to be enabled.

How can I find books that I can download? explains briefly what I've already covered in more depth above, but that might expand over time.

What is a public domain work? explains what books Google considers to be in the public domain.

Google's not the only place offering electronic, downloadable books. Project Gutenberg is probably the best known long-standing site already doing this, and you can see some of the top titles here, similar to what I hope Google will do in the future.

That's also a handy way to see if Google offers some of the most popular titles that Project Gutenberg does. So far, the answer is no. I took this top ten list from Project Gutenberg:

I did quick searches using the Full View option along with the titles and author names. I couldn't find any of them available at Google for download.

Gary Price has also written about ebrary in the past that offers books for purchase and, I believe, some limited downloads for free. Last month, he also wrote of the World eBook Fair making 300,000 titles available for download. World eBook Library still offers links to these works, but you have to pay $9 per year for access to them. Wow, look at all those sci-fi books from Baen, including the alternative history work 1633 (I thought 1632 was great, 1633 OK and 1634, ugh!).

Watch ResourceShelf, as Gary's sure to post on alternatives to find downloadable books when he gets going later today. In the meantime, back when he was with us, his More Sources For Ebooks & Electronic Text post has a lot of resources you'll still find useful.

Google's also still apparently pondering sales of in-copyright works, with publisher permission, something that was floated by the company as an idea earlier this year. Amazon's also got similar plans in the works, but I don't recall seeing that having launched yet, despite its announcement nearly a year ago.

Finally, Google's also just offered a way for anyone to put a Google Book Search box on their site. Now you can add Google Book Search to your site from the official Google Book Search blog has more, as does this instruction page.

Postscript: For more resources on downloading books, see Gary Price's story here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:07 AM | Permalink

August 22, 2006

LibreDigital Warehouse Competes With Google Book Search

Steve Bryant reports that "publishers fight back against Google," with their own book search service. The new service is named LibreDigital Warehouse and was announced by HarperCollins and LibreDigital the other day. This new service will give "publishers and booksellers the ability to deliver searchable book content on their own Web sites." The technology empowers publishers to define rules on a partner and book title level, defining which pages are viewable, which pages are not, and what percentage of the pages are available. They will begin offer about 200 HarperCollins titles and increase that to 10,000 titles or so. More details on the service at eWeek.com.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:09 AM | Permalink

August 9, 2006

University of California Joins Google's Book Scan Project

As expected the University of California is partnering with Google on the Google library scanning project. Reuters reports that Google will be funding "the scanning of "several million" of the 34 million titles in the University of California's libraries."

Postscript From Danny: The partnership means that UC becomes the first organization to my knowledge to partner with both major scanning programs from search engines. UC partnered with Microsoft on its project in June. UC is also part of the broader Open Content Alliance backed by both Microsoft and Yahoo.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:05 AM | Permalink

August 2, 2006

Google Negotiating With University Of California On Book Search

UC May Join Google's Library Project from the Los Angeles Times covers news that Google may enter into an agreement with the University of California to scan library content for the Google Book Search service.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:58 PM | Permalink

July 5, 2006

Google To Launch Book Search Service In China

The People's Daily Online reports that Google will be launching an on-line book search service in China. Google signed agreements with publishing houses, instead of libraries (as Baidu has), including publishers named Tsinghua University Press and the Children's Publishing House. Google said that the books would be available on-line, "provide search links and grant free access to a segment of each work, but readers would have to pay to read the full content." Google plans on taking a 30 percent commission from the profit on selling books online.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:55 AM | Permalink

Google To Launch Book Search Service In China

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:55 AM | Permalink

Google To Launch Book Search Service In China

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:55 AM | Permalink

Google To Launch Book Search Service In China

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:55 AM | Permalink

June 28, 2006

Google Book Search Wins Victory In German Challenge

I wrote earlier this month of a French lawsuit becoming the third one I knew about filed against Google over its book scanning project. Turns out, there was a fourth one -- based out of Germany. But now we're back to three, as Google has just announced that the German one has been withdrawn.

It looks to be Google's first legal victory in the battles over the project. From Google, via its Inside Google Book Search blog (and also on its main blog):

WBG, a German publisher, today decided to drop its petition for preliminary injunction against the Google Books Library Project. WBG (whose legal action was supported by the German Publishers Association as an industry model) made the decision after being told by the Copyright Chamber of the Regional Court of Hamburg that its petition was unlikely to succeed. It's our belief that the display of short snippets from in-copyright books does not infringe German copyright law. Today the Court indicated that it agreed, drawing a comparison with the snippets used in Google web search. And the Court also rejected the WBG's argument that the scanning of its books in the U.S. infringed German copyright law.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:29 PM | Permalink

Google Book Search Wins Victory In German Challenge

It looks to be Google's first legal victory in the battles over the project. From Google, via its Inside Google Book Search blog (and also on its main blog):

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 3:29 PM | Permalink

Google Book Search Wins Victory In German Challenge

It looks to be Google's first legal victory in the battles over the project. From Google, via its Inside Google Book Search blog (and also on its main blog):

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 3:29 PM | Permalink

Google Book Search Wins Victory In German Challenge

It looks to be Google's first legal victory in the battles over the project. From Google, via its Inside Google Book Search blog (and also on its main blog):

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 3:29 PM | Permalink

Google Book Search Scans Books By Hand?

Philipp Lenssen reports on how Google actually scans in books for the Google Book Search service. Yes, it seems like Google does it all by hand! Take a look at page three of The Trial and Death of Socrates. Now that is funny.

Postscript: Gary Price reminds me of his post on Learn About Open Content Alliance Book Scanning at the University of Toronto, with a link to Internet Archive's Book Scanning Robot. So that is how it works.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:55 AM | Permalink

Google Book Search Scans Books By Hand?

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:55 AM | Permalink

Google Book Search Scans Books By Hand?

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:55 AM | Permalink

Google Book Search Scans Books By Hand?

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:55 AM | Permalink

June 14, 2006

Google's Complete Plays Of Shakespeare Less Than Compleat

The Google blog 'Inside Google Book Search' announced in No holds bard that it is now possible to explore Shakespeare with Google - The complete plays of Shakespeare now at your fingertips. Well no, not exactly. I've spent some time playing around with this resource and it's less than impressive for a number of reasons.

I decided to take a look at the full text of a couple of plays, but in common with Philipp Lenssen found that I couldn't actually see the full text. All that I got was a fairly brief page with some bibliographic data, an opportunity to buy the book and links to related information. I went through each section in turn and found that in total I could read 13 of the plays Google listed, but was unable to do so for another 24. This may be in part due to the fact that I'm in the UK, and as the Google blog comments in an update some versions of the plays are not in the public domain everywhere in the world, so we can only see snippets.

I simply do not believe that Google could not have found versions of the plays that are out of copyright, particularly as they are keen for us to have the complete plays at our fingertips. However, I'll let that pass. What I really find unforgivable is their section 'Other ways to explore Shakespeare'. This gives me options to look for more resources, take a scholarly perspective, connect with enthusiasts and so on. Clicking on any of these links runs a default search for 'shakespeare'. Consequently with most of these options I get a huge number of results, many of them inappropriate. A search just on 'shakespeare' is the kind of basic search that I'd expect a school child to do once. I find it amazing that someone at Google could not have come up with rather more interesting and complex searches to fully utilise the power of the search engine, not only to give us a good search result, but also to show us just what it can do.

The concept is a great one; full marks to Google for having a go at it. The result is very much less than perfect, and for Google to say that they're making Shakespeare more accessible is in my opinion boardering on disingenuous.

Posted by Phil Bradley at 11:02 PM | Permalink

Google's Complete Plays Of Shakespeare Less Than Compleat

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:02 PM | Permalink

Google's Complete Plays Of Shakespeare Less Than Compleat

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:02 PM | Permalink

Google's Complete Plays Of Shakespeare Less Than Compleat

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:02 PM | Permalink

June 6, 2006

French Lawsuit Over Google Book Search French publisher sues Google for piracy from AFP and French book publisher sues Google from the BBC cover how a French publishing group becomes the third to sue Google over its book scanning program. La Martiniere alleges the indexing project violates copyright. Association of American Publishers Sues Google over Library Digitization Plan and Google's Library Scanning Project Heads to Court (action by the Authors Guild) covers the two other suits that I know of, which we've blogged about before.

Postscript: Google argues with U.K. publishers over digital libraries from News.com covers publishers in the UK making new attacks against the program. The Publishers Association trots out the usual argument that scanning to index is the same as copying to reprint and that permission should be required.

The group's web site, it should be noted, has 919 pages listed in Google, all of which are protected by copyright, all of which Google and other search engines index without explicit permission -- and all of which the group apparently doesn't object to, since it doesn't seem to have banned indexing using a robots.txt file (the site is down, so I can't verify this first hand -- but the pages really are unlikely to be listed if this were the case). But do the same thing with a print book -- copy for indexing purposes rather than reprinting -- and suddenly, that's infringement. Well, the courts will sort it out.

Indexing Versus Caching & How Google Print Doesn't Reprint and Once Again -- The Difference Between Google Print & Google Library are two key articles from me that examine the issues above in much more depth.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:45 AM | Permalink

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 10:45 AM | Permalink

May 18, 2006

A Talk With Vinton Cerf On Google Book Search

Leslie Walker from the Washington Post sat down with Vinton Cerf, founding father of the Internet and Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, about Google Book Search. They basically talked about Google's goal in digitizing books to make them easily findable via search. Read the article at WashingtonPost.com.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:10 AM | Permalink

A Talk With Vinton Cerf On Google Book Search

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:10 AM | Permalink

A Talk With Vinton Cerf On Google Book Search

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:10 AM | Permalink

A Talk With Vinton Cerf On Google Book Search

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:10 AM | Permalink

May 9, 2006

Inside Google Book Search Blog Launches

Google has recently launched Inside Google Book Search, the Google Book Search blog. The blog will not only keep us informed on Google Book Search product announcements, but will also provide Google book search tips. They will also highlight books they found useful and enlightening at the blog. Visit the new blog at http://booksearch.blogspot.com/.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:35 AM | Permalink

Inside Google Book Search Blog Launches

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:35 AM | Permalink

Inside Google Book Search Blog Launches

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:35 AM | Permalink

Inside Google Book Search Blog Launches

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:35 AM | Permalink

March 13, 2006

Google Partnering With Publishers To Sell Online Books

Google gave me the heads-up late Friday that a new feature allowing publishers to sell online versions of their books through Google Book Search was about to go live. Nothing was yet online when we talked, but that's since changed. A new help page, What does it mean to sell online access to my book?, explains that the program is the first in a series of revenue tools being rolled out for publishers.

The experiment will allow publishers to sell access to their books online, something Google hinted was coming back in November and January. Publishers set a price, then consumers can buy and read the book online. At the moment, the program supposedly will not allow copies of the book to be saved to a computer or pages to be printed ("copy pages") to be made. We'll see. So far, Google's existing protections limiting what users can see from books online have not been cracked, to my knowledge.

The program does not allow anyone but publishers in the US and UK who are voluntarily in the Google Books Partner Program to sell books online. Google also has book content that comes from its library scanning program. These books are not being sold. It bears stressing:

GOOGLE IS NOT SELLING BOOKS THAT IT HAS SCANNED FROM THE COMPLETELY SEPARATE GOOGLE LIBRARY PROGRAM.

Despite the capital letters and bolding, expect that many will begin saying that Google is now illegally selling books that it has scanned from libraries, just as many incorrectly say Google is reprinting scanned books online (they aren't). Some will do this out of misunderstanding. Some opposed to the library scanning program will do it on purpose, just to continue muddying the waters. To understand the myths and realities, please consider reading these past posts from me:

Want to start buying books now? Hang in there. Google told me that first they're getting publishers up and running, then at some undetermined point in the future, books available for sale will be offered.

John Battelle's got a very short note on the new page being up over here. As a sidenote, be sure to check out John Battelle's The Search and Google Book Search that John pointed at last week. In the interview, you can see how his publisher Penguin won't let books go into Google Book Search despite John wanting to be there. I like this part of the copyright page in his book:

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

Wow -- I didn't know the lawsuit over the library scanning program had been settled. Certainly it's fair use for anyone to copy, scan and do other things with pieces of the book without permission, depending on the various circumstances involved. Whether the entire book can be scanned for indexing purposes, rather than reprinting online, is what the lawsuit that Penguin and others are trying to discover.

By the way, distribution of the book "via any other means" is also mentioned. I wonder if every library that has a copy of the book got the publisher's permission to redistribute to their patrons. I'm guessing not. Expect libraries to be sued shortly.

Back to book selling, the Unofficial Google Weblog points to Google Offers Online Pay Plan from Publishers Weekly, which quotes Google talking about "perpetual access" to the books you buy, plus Google saying publishers will get the majority of the price charged, though Google itself will of course also cash in.

Threadwatch points at this blog post, which covers how publishers in the partner program got the news via email and citing one anonymously who is surprised/shocked that publishers are being asked to enroll without yet seeing what the money split will be exactly. Good point.

Information Week has news of publishers Taylor & Francis and Brill already signed up to sell through the service.

For more on Google Book Search, please see our Google: Book Search & Library category, if you are a Search Engine Watch member (and thank you, if so). You might also check out A Look Back as Google's Library Project Passes the One Year Mark.

Want to comment or discuss? Please visit our Google To Sell Online Books thread at our Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:53 AM | Permalink

Google Partnering With Publishers To Sell Online Books

GOOGLE IS NOT SELLING BOOKS THAT IT HAS SCANNED FROM THE COMPLETELY SEPARATE GOOGLE LIBRARY PROGRAM.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

Information Week has news of publishers Taylor & Francis and Brill already signed up to sell through the service.

Want to comment or discuss? Please visit our Google To Sell Online Books thread at our Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:53 AM | Permalink

Google Partnering With Publishers To Sell Online Books

GOOGLE IS NOT SELLING BOOKS THAT IT HAS SCANNED FROM THE COMPLETELY SEPARATE GOOGLE LIBRARY PROGRAM.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

Information Week has news of publishers Taylor & Francis and Brill already signed up to sell through the service.

Want to comment or discuss? Please visit our Google To Sell Online Books thread at our Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:53 AM | Permalink

Google Partnering With Publishers To Sell Online Books

GOOGLE IS NOT SELLING BOOKS THAT IT HAS SCANNED FROM THE COMPLETELY SEPARATE GOOGLE LIBRARY PROGRAM.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

Information Week has news of publishers Taylor & Francis and Brill already signed up to sell through the service.

Want to comment or discuss? Please visit our Google To Sell Online Books thread at our Search Engine Watch Forums.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:53 AM | Permalink

March 8, 2006

Google Book Search Adds Find it in a Library for Some Books

The Google Blog announced that they added a link to some books named "Find it in a Library". I have been unable to find a book in Google Book Search with a link named "Find it in a Library," just yet. Google says that clicking on the "Find it in a Library" link will send you to the OCLC Worldcat. At OCLC you can enter your zip code and find a local library that has the book you search for.

If you are looking for alternatives to Google Book Search, I know Gary Price, the librarian himself, is a huge fan of RedLightGreen for book search. Gary wrote a SearchDay article on it named Searching for Library Books with RedLightGreen. Other alternatives Gary wrote about include NetLibrary and ebrary.

Postscript: After researching more I figured that new books would not have the "Find it in a Library" link. So I searched on a out of copyright book and presto, here is an example (see the bottom left for the link). I am not 100% sure this is brand new, the Google Blog post may be just pointing out that this is a feature on some books.

Postscript From Danny: The library links have been in place since 2004, as covered here. But Google says it wishes to expand them and also highlights in the post that if you can't wait for this, this Greasemonkey script for Firefox will do it for you.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 4:34 PM | Permalink

Google Book Search Adds Find it in a Library for Some Books

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 4:34 PM | Permalink

Google Book Search Adds Find it in a Library for Some Books

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 4:34 PM | Permalink

Google Book Search Adds Find it in a Library for Some Books

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 4:34 PM | Permalink

Amazon More a Threat to Publishers Than Google

Reuters reports that Amazon is seen as a larger threat to the print publishing industry than Google. HarperCollins UK's CEO, Victoria Barnsley said, "We all want to talk about Google, but personally I see Amazon as a bigger threat because Amazon has shown a lot of signs that they actually want to move into the publishing space." They are now considering leaving Amazon and creating their own online distribution service, direct to the consumer. She did, in regards to Google, "I do think that search -- which is what Google is about -- is going to transform our industry. I think it's the most exciting that's happened." That is why they want to keep an open "dialogue" with Google at all times.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:59 AM | Permalink

Amazon More a Threat to Publishers Than Google

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 10:59 AM | Permalink

Amazon More a Threat to Publishers Than Google

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 10:59 AM | Permalink

Amazon More a Threat to Publishers Than Google

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 10:59 AM | Permalink

February 7, 2006

President of University of Michigan Talks Google Book Search

Via Searchblog, I read the excerpts from a speech by the President of the University of Michigan, Mary Sue Coleman, about Google Book Search or to be more specific Google's Library Program. The full text of the speech is here (thanks John). I have no intention on arguing the intellectual property/copyright/fair use issues that the program brings to the forefront. I'll save that for the lawyers and judges.

However, a couple of quick comments on other issues.

First, Google's efforts to digitize materials both public domain and in-copyright are noble and should be applauded.

However, as we've pointed out on SEW Blog several times, the searcher who finds in-copyright material (that's been digitized via a library collection) will only be able to read snippets of these books online. In other words, it's not a full text book search tool. As Google describes it:

"...Snippet View which, like a card catalog, shows you information about the book plus a few snippets – a few sentences of your search term in context."

Quick note to Google. Card catalogs are very rare these days. They are, for the most part, now called Online Public Access Catalogs. They are web accessible and often contain lots of value added data like reviews, tables-of-content, indexes, author bio's, etc. I posted on this topic last year with several examples of the "modern" card catalog.

If you're interested, Google is using the year 1922 as a baseline to determine copyright.

For users in the U.S., Google Book Search currently treats all books published after 1922 as protected by copyright, except for books to which no copyright was ever attached, such as books authored by the U.S. government. For users outside the U.S., we make determinations based on appropriate local law.

New, in-copyright books will also be available (as part of the Google Book Search "Partner Program"). No legal issues here. Users view as much content as the publisher deems fit.

This is no different than what Amazon.com is also doing with their Search Inside the Book program that currently also offers lots of cool stats for SITB titles.

As far as "pure" public domain material, the full text will be viewable online and in full text via Google Book Search. However, as Ms. Coleman points out libraries and others have been digitizing books in one form or another for many years. For example, Project Gutenberg began in 1971. A great directory of public domain books (from a variety of sources including Google, Project Gutenberg, and many others) is available here.

Of course, let's not forget that late last year we learned that Yahoo, Microsoft, RLG, and others are supporting another large digitization (books and other materials) effort called The Open Content Alliance that's being led by Brewster Kahle.

As a librarian, I'm thrilled that the potential for people to make better use of their libraries could be made possible by Google's Library Program. However,

+ Will people make the extra effort to get the book they need from the library or via interlibrary loan if what they find online is only a snippet? This could be great news for the library community but would it be good news for Google?

+ I'm asking this question because of comment from Google's Chief Counsel, David Drummond, at a November 2005 Google print "debate" at the NY Public Library. Here's how the NY Times reported it:

Mr. [Allan] Adler [a vice president for legal and governmental affairs at the Association of American Publishers]said Google's contention that its search program might somehow increase sales of books was speculation at best.

"When people make inquiries using Google's search engine and they come up with references to books, they are just as likely to come to this fine institution to look up those references as they are to buy them," he said, referring to the Public Library.

To which Google's Mr. Drummond [Google's general counsel] replied, "Horrors."

I also once again want to point out that many other companies are out there offering full text access to a variety of book materials. In some cases, these databases are available at little or no cost, allow you to access the full text, print content, annotate, etc.

Here are a few posts that look at some of these services:

+ NetLibrary: Over 100,000 Digitized and Searchable Books Available Online

+ Search and Read Full Text Books Onli