U. of Michigan President Defends Library's Role in Book-Scanning Project.

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Author: Foster, Andrea L.

Dateline: Washington

The president of the University of Michigan, Mary Sue Coleman, said in a speech to publishers of scholarly books last week that her institution's participation in the controversial Google Library Project is "a legal, ethical, and a noble endeavor." But many of the publishers responded with indignation.

Librarians on the university's Ann Arbor campus have agreed to let Google scan and digitize all of the library's books â€" including those still protected by copyright â€" and then add them to the company's searchable online index. Scanning has been under way for more than a year.

Ms. Coleman said the project is ethical because it contributes to the "betterment of humankind" and noble because it is "right."

"The Google book project is a remarkable opportunity â€" and a natural evolution â€" for a university whose mission is to create, to communicate, to preserve, and to apply knowledge," she said. "It is simply what we do and why we exist."

But in a question-and-answer session after her speech, several book publishers disputed Ms. Coleman's assertion that the project is legal. They asserted that the enterprise would enrich Google's coffers while neglecting the rights of publishers and authors.

"What gives [Google] the right to digitize my book without my permission?" one audience member asked Ms. Coleman. "In most cases, that would be considered stealing."

Many scholars have hailed the project, announced more than a year ago, as a potentially monumental contribution to academic research. But groups representing publishers and authors have filed lawsuits against Google, arguing that digitizing copyrighted works for commercial use without permission from the copyright owners violates copyright law.

Google's partners in the project include four other research libraries â€" at Harvard and Stanford Universities; the University of Oxford, in England; and the New York Public Library â€" that also are letting the company scan some parts of their collections. So far only the Michigan library has said Google can scan every book on its shelves. The university is not directly profiting from the venture, according to a campus librarian, but Google is compensating Michigan for the costs of handling and transporting the books (The Chronicle, June 20, 2005).

After Google announced the project, Microsoft and Yahoo said they were teaming up with the Internet Archive for a similar but more limited project. The Internet Archive, a nonprofit group, will only digitize works that are in the public domain (The Chronicle, January 27).

Ms. Coleman spoke here at the annual conference of the professional and scholarly division of the Association of American Publishers. The trade group is among the organizations that have sued to stop the Google book-scanning project.

She reiterated Google's early pronouncements about the project, arguing that scanning copyrighted material into Google is allowed under the law's fair-use exemption. Google has said that its search results will show only a few lines of text from copyrighted works, along with links allowing users to buy the works or find them in libraries.

Ms. Coleman also portrayed the project as an effort to save and preserve academic libraries' deteriorating collections. Of Michigan's library books, about a quarter â€" more than 1.5 million volumes â€" are on brittle paper, she said, and an additional 3.5 million books are on acidic paper that will eventually break down. Digitizing books, she said, is particularly necessary in order to safeguard libraries' collections in times of natural disasters, war, and other calamities. She mentioned library collections that were destroyed at Tulane University last fall as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

Ms. Coleman said students' preferred research tool was now the Internet, not libraries. "We must change with our students," she said. "And that means embracing the Internet for all it can, and does, offer."

She also said she believed that the book-scanning project would promote book sales. "I can't understand why any bookseller or publisher, especially scholarly presses with such narrow audiences, would oppose an approach that all but guarantees increased exposure," she said.

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By Andrea L. Foster