The business section of today's New York Times traces the "soul
searching" of one of the participants in Google's Book Search Library
Project (last week Google Print morphed into Google Book Search):
Sidney Verbar, director of the Harvard University Library, one of the
five libraries whose works Google has begun to scan.
As an author and former chairman of Harvard University Press, Verba understands the concerns of publishers and authors, he told the paper. But as a librarian and teacher, he said, he believes that the Google idea "will meet the needs of students who gravitate to the Internet . . . and will aid the library's broader mission to preserve academic material and make it accessible to the world." Students, who continue to be drawn to Google for research, will be taken to the library, he insisted.
So far, Google has scanned just 40,000 Harvard books, largely in the public domain. One factor in Harvard joining the Google project: the high cost of digitizing its own collection. Google is reportedly spending more than $200 million on Google Book Search and has built its own scanners. Participating libraries receive a digital copy of each scanned book.
As an author and former chairman of Harvard University Press, Verba understands the concerns of publishers and authors, he told the paper. But as a librarian and teacher, he said, he believes that the Google idea "will meet the needs of students who gravitate to the Internet . . . and will aid the library's broader mission to preserve academic material and make it accessible to the world." Students, who continue to be drawn to Google for research, will be taken to the library, he insisted.
So far, Google has scanned just 40,000 Harvard books, largely in the public domain. One factor in Harvard joining the Google project: the high cost of digitizing its own collection. Google is reportedly spending more than $200 million on Google Book Search and has built its own scanners. Participating libraries receive a digital copy of each scanned book.