University of California May Join Google's Library Project

By Larry Gordon
Times Staff Writer

7:52 PM PDT, August 1, 2006

In a move with major significance for the worlds of academic research and publishing, the University of California is in talks to join Google's controversial project to digitize great libraries and offer books online.

Google is keen to have access to UC's 34 million volumes from 100 libraries on 10 campuses, which is described as collectively the largest academic research library in the world. UC wants to delve more deeply into the Internet revolution with a deep-pockets partner like Google paying the costs of scanning books.

UC President Robert C. Dynes and top UC librarians are negotiating a contract to follow six other prestigious library systems, including Harvard's and Stanford's, which already allow Google Inc. to scan and post on the Internet at least summary references to books.

Older volumes in the public domain, generally those published before 1923, can be put online in full, but debate and litigation surround how much material can be used from books still protected by copyright.

Daniel Greenstein, UC's associate vice provost for scholarly information, said that joining the Google Books Library Project -- with its ability to search for terms inside texts, not just in catalog listings -- would help "create access like we've never had before to our cultural heritage and scholarly memory. It's a whole new paradigm."

In an interview Tuesday, Greenstein also said that such digitizing offers protection for writings that might be lost in natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina and earthquakes. "It's the kind of stewardship that is absolutely vital to us and the community in general," said Greenstein, who oversees digital projects for UC libraries.

A UC deal with Google could be announced within a month, officials said. However, the arrangement first faces close scrutiny from the UC regents and the publishing world for potential copyright issues and concerns that UC might lose out on future revenue.

Last year, a group of U.S. publishers and the Authors Guild filed suits in federal court in New York against Google, contending that scanning copyrighted books without permission is copyright infringement, even if the books are not posted online or only tiny excerpts are shown.

Allan Adler, vice president of legal and government affairs for the Association of American Publishers, which is backing one of the lawsuits, said he understood why the search engine giant would want to sign up UC's enormous libraries. "It would be a significant addition with the sheer volume of the materials involved," he said.

Google's university partners are not defendants in the suits and UC probably would not be either, Adler said. "But on the other hand, it is rather curious that the University of California would announce this knowing the project is under a cloud of litigation at the moment," he said.

Under agreements with libraries, Google makes two copies of books, keeps one and gives one to the campuses. To avoid trouble, some of the libraries now allow scanning of only public domain books. But the University of Michigan and Google have said that they do not need permission to allow a few sentences from copyrighted works online; such "fair use" quotation, they said, can help authors by boosting sales.

UC probably would follow the Michigan model in scanning works both in and out of copyright, Greenstein said. "This is not about breaking the law or stealing material," he said, stressing that university attorneys have approved the idea.

Megan Lamb, a Google spokeswoman, said the Mountain View, Calif.-based company now works with four universities in the United States and England -- Stanford, Harvard, Michigan and Oxford -- along with the New York Public Library and, in a pilot stage, the Library of Congress. The Google Book Search (http://books.google.com) also includes partnerships with some publishers that usually allow several pages of books to be shown.

"We are very interested in exploring additional partnerships to make the world of books searchable online," Lamb said. But she said the firm would not comment on the UC negotiations at this point.

UC last year joined another online book scanning and posting project as part of the Open Content Alliance. (http://www.opencontentalliance.org) That alliance, which is still in an early stage, has the backing of Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft and includes other universities and archives in the United States, Canada and Europe. It is starting only with books in the public domain.

Greenstein said UC would keep its membership in that alliance if it also joined the Google initiative. But he and other experts said Google offers much more capacity and resources for scanning. Google wants to digitize several million books in UC's holdings over the next six years or so, a scale the Alliance could not afford, he said.

Lamb, the Google spokeswoman, said the company does not reveal how many books it has scanned nor how many visits its book search site receives. Google receives no revenues from books that are sold through links to its site, but the firm does earn advertising revenues on portions affiliated with publishers, she said.

UC would not receive any payments under the proposed contract. It potentially could save millions of dollars a year if libraries can buy fewer copies of books and journals and fill in with digital versions. Plus, it could avoid scanning costs, which some estimate can be as much as $35 a book.

The university would have to initially invest between $1 million and $5 million for computer storage and spend upward of $700,000 a year for such costs as staff salaries for moving books for scanning, officials said.

UC regents heard the outlines of the possible Google deal at a recent meeting. While expressing general support, several regents expressed worries about copyright issues and whether Google might somehow exploit UC in the future.

"The sense is to move forward with caution and to be able to defend that this is fair to the university for the next 30 years," said board President Gerald L. Parsky. In an interview this week, UC Regent Norman J. Pattiz, chairman of radio company Westwood One, said he too wanted to ensure that the university shares in any future revenues the pact might generate.

"It may be a good enough deal today. But I don't know Google's business plan in the future," he said. "We are in the Information Age and things change every 15 seconds. Somewhere down the line, there may be a business plan that provides for generating revenue."

UC system spokesman Michael Reese said that several regents would be consulted, but that the matter would be decided by Dynes and does not require a vote by the full Board of Regents.