I do not often feel a lot of sympathy for large monopolistic corporations, particularly when they have some history of unilateral moves. In the case of Google Books, and all the negative attention it has received over the four years this case has gone on, I might make an exception.
[Snip]
If being in it for the money is a bad thing, then you could rightly call Google a bad actor. In fairness, you should also write off a good number of the organizations that have filed briefs against Google in the copyright settlement case--Amazon, Yahoo! and Microsoft, in all likelihood, were more concerned about competing with Google than about the world's access to the cultural heritage of books going back centuries. Otherwise, perhaps they could have scanned and digitized all these volumes, then donated them to the United Nations or something.
And that gets to my sympathy for Google in this matter: It did something bold, and we are all better off for it.
See Also: As we said a few weeks ago, yes, of course, Google has scanned millions of out of-print titles to this point and made them available a variety of ways. However, this doesn't mean that other organizations like The Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, ebrary***, International Children's Digital Library and many other organizations like universities (e.g., University of Victoria, Canada**** and the University of Illinois) are doing some great work digitizing/scanning books and other materials that are often available online for free or for free via a local library. Want more free online books? Then visit the Online Books Page. It contains material from a wide variety of sources including Google. Just look at how much has been added from a variety of sources in the past few days.
*** Actually, anyone can access over 20,000 full text titles (new and recently published) online from ebrary. Simply head to http://shop.ebrary.com, register, put a minimum of $5 on a credit card and the online collection is yours to read online. You only pay (money deducted from your account) if you copy or print a page.
The FreePint Family is a family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success.
'FreePint... provides most of my professional development because it won't come through work and [other resources] just don't cut it.'
FUMSI Forum: Do you have a research question? Post it to the FUMSI Forum, where professionals share Q&A and useful tips on how to Find, Use, Manage and Share Information. It's free.
FreePint Shop:
VIP LiveWire:
