Library Tech Confidential

From Google settles landmark lawsuit over book scanning [Library Journal] :

If approved by a federal judge, the settlement would end a class-action suit filed September 20, 2005 by the AG and certain authors, and another suit filed October 19, 2005 by five major AAP members. It would transform Google Book Search into a major online bookstore, creating a one-stop experience for users who wishing to search, access, print or buy copies of books. The announcement comes just weeks after LJ reported reported on October 10 that a settlement was imminent… [read more]

A settlement is good, but a verdict confirming Google’s approach as fair use would have been better.  For more information on what this will mean for Google Book Search product, there’s more detailed information from Google. 

This paves the way for some seriously innovative offerings that will be particularly relevant to special libraries.  When trying to find titles for ILL I have frequently come up empty at local libraries but found exactly what I need on Google.  Depending on the price point, this could be a real lifesaver.

Kottke’s guest blogger has posted a fantastic interview with Cory Doctorow on copyright, 21st century literature, and appropriately compensating artists for the indexing and public availability of their work :

“You know, the fact that Amazon or Google want to show quotes from your book alongside search results for people who are trying to find out which books contain which string, I think it’s just crazy to say that you deserve to be compensated for that even if they could figure out a way to make money off of it. Indexing books is just not in the realm of things that we deserve to get compensated for, any more than library lending is.

And I know that in Europe they do have a library right, and you actually do get compensated for library use. I actually think that’s kind of gross. I don’t think that’s good public policy. If we want to subsidize writers with public money, don’t take it out of the budget of the library. What a disaster for public policy, for good stewardship, to take money out the hands of the public libraries. What a disaster that writers have actually endorsed this plan.”

If that doesn’t provide a clear enough picture of his position on digital re-distribution of copyright works, here’s what he says in the bio on his personal website:

“I believe that we live in an era where anything that can be expressed as bits will be. I believe that bits exist to be copied. Therefore, I believe that any business-model that depends on your bits not being copied is just dumb, and that lawmakers who try to prop these up are like governments that sink fortunes into protecting people who insist on living on the sides of active volcanoes.”

At the risk of violating my personal prohibition against bandwagon-jumping and/or endorsing unabashed declarations of historical inevitability… can I get an amen, brothers and sisters?

In any case, I think the “library right” to which he refers in the first quote above may be the “rental and lending right” established in Directive 1992/100/EEC (since replaced by Directive 2006/115/EC), although my familiarity with law there is not sufficient for me to say so with any great degree of certainty.

In Canada we have the Public Lending Right Commission. According to it’s FAQ, the Commission disbributes payment to authors of registered “works of fiction, poetry, drama, children’s books, scholarly books, and general non-fiction” that meet certain criteria, with compensation being based on their presence in the catalogues of a representative sample of Canadian public libraries rather than tied to circulation statistics or any other measure of use.

In February of this year, $9 million in public funds were distributed among some 15,000 authors (an average payment of $588 per author). Given that compensation was capped at a maximum of $281.05 per title, I guess that means the ‘average’ compensated author has 2.09 works in the registry; however, compensation is calculated using a sliding scale whereby recent works are worth more than older ones.

I can’t help but wonder if Cory, an ex-pat Canadian, has registered any of his numerous titles?

Libraries rebuff Google and Microsoft on offers to place books on Web [Int’l Herald Tribune] : “The[se] research libraries, including a large consortium in the Boston area, are instead signing on with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit effort to make digital material as widely accessible as possible.”

Google’s approach is to scan everything in a collection order to create an unparalleled full-text finding aid that leads users toward purchasing access to a title (or locating a hard copy at a nearby library), whereas OCA only scans out-of-copyright works so as to post titles in their entirety without onerous restrictions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Library of Congress Advances 2 Digital Projects Abroad [New York Times] : “The world library started two years ago with a $3 million grant from Google and technical assistance by Apple. Initially, five other libraries contributed material for the prototype, including the national libraries of Egypt, Brazil and Russia.”

World Digital Library’s prototype unveiled [AP / Int’l Herald Tribune] : “The digital library’s five other partner institutions are Egypt’s Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the National Library [and Archives] of Egypt, the National Library of Brazil, the National Library of Russia and the Russian State Library.”

According to the Tribune, the World Digital Library will be “modeled on the Library of Congress’ American Memory project”, which I think is excellent news.

A brief streaming video outlining the project is available at the WDL’s website, along with a PowerPoint deck from the 2006 IFLA World Library and Information Conference.

While the initiative itself is not new — it was announced back in November of 2005 — having six national libraries formally on board and actually producing content means that might not remain in the prototype stage for too much longer.

Here’s a quick round-up of articles on the rival book scanning partnership involving (among others) Yahoo!, Microsoft, and The Internet Archive:

• Open Content Alliance Rises to the Challenge of Google Print [Information Today]
• In Challenge To Google, Yahoo Will Scan Books [New York Times]
• “Where Google makes the books it digitizes available for downloading only in Adobe Acrobat format, the OCA makes all the files available for downloading—from the raw images to the metadata. Books digitized by the OCA are freely available for browsing and downloading on the Internet Archive site.” [Library Journal]

Of course, the Internet Archive has been scanning books since before Google Print came to light; however, Google’s aggressive expansion appears to have spurred the tag-teaming with Yahoo! and MSN. For a taste of what the Open Content Alliance is producing, check out The Open Library; this document lays out founder Brewster Kahle’s vision for the project.

Legal action against Google by copyright holders has taken an interesting twist, too, with Google subpeonaing Yahoo! and Microsoft (among others) for documents meant to bolster its defence.

My TPL Finder map of Toronto Public Library branches rated a mention over at Google Maps Mania, along with some other great Canadian-oriented projects worth trying.

I’ve slapped together a Google Map of Toronto Public Library branches using a wonderful tool called Map Builder.

All 99 branches are represented, with small blue pushpins for neighbourhood branches, large blue pins for district libraries and large white pins for reference libraries.

Clicking on any icon brings up an infowindow with (in most cases) a photo of the library plus a link to TPL’s profile of the branch for hours of operation, etc. I plan to add wheelchair accessibility and special collections information soon.

I might even spin it off into it’s own domain name, tplfinder.com or somesuch.

If you notice anything incorrect or awry, please let me know!

Kevin Kelly, “Scan This Book!“, New York Times, 14 May 2006:

The explosive rise of the Web, going from nothing to everything in one decade, has encouraged us to believe in the impossible again. Might the long-heralded great library of all knowledge really be within our grasp?(snip)

Today you need a building about the size of a small-town library to house 50 petabytes. With tomorrow’s technology, it will all fit onto your iPod. When that happens, the library of all libraries will ride in your purse or wallet - if it doesn’t plug directly into your brain with thin white cords…

(snip)

Turning inked letters into electronic dots that can be read on a screen is simply the first essential step in creating this new library. The real magic will come in the second act, as each word in each book is cross-linked, clustered, cited, extracted, indexed, analyzed, annotated, remixed, reassembled and woven deeper into the culture than ever before. In the new world of books, every bit informs another; every page reads all the other pages…

After an overview of a few key digitization initiatives, Kelly — a colleague of Anderson de long tail — provides a fair representation of the publishers’ case against the Google Library project (first, that Google is scanning before seeking permission to do so [and thus arguably breaking copyright for some period even in permission is ultimately granted], and second, that Google plans to provide access to presumptively ‘orphaned’ works and only remove scans after publishers complain).

The implications for a shift of patrons’ in-library facility use from a place to sift through cites to select books suitable for use (and check-out), to place were you use Google’s catalogue to identify titles on the basis of full-text content (rather than mere bibliographic details) before searching for the physical volumes in the library’s own catalogue in order to physically retrieve and check them out for use elsewhere. This may clear the stacks of browsers and page-flippers, but maynecessitatee further growth in already huge (and expensive) banks of computer ‘Learning Commons’ computer workstations… unless patrons are actively encouraged to do all their searches from home, and use the physical library only to quickly get their books and run along.

As Google Library’s catalogue expands, libraries would do well to direct frustrated to the (now-underutilized) interlibrary loan system, making more efficient use of collections everywhere, perhaps even to the point of overburdening the system in its current form.

Publishers are wary of Google for now, but the worm will turn once it becomes sufficiently hard to borrow relatively popular long-tail titles via libraries, and patrons are drawn to the for-fee option of accessing an entire work — which Google has already scanned, at no cost to the publisher, and which is now generating royalties again. You might turn up your nose at the idea of paying $10.00 for temporary access to scans now, sight-unseen, but the assurance of relevant content thathardcoree, full-text searchability provides an eager researcher might well alter the value calculus.

Tags: Long tail, Google Library, interlibrary loan.