Barry Schwartz reports that University of Wisconsin-Madison Library has joined the Google Library Program.

Since Google is quiet about the status of the scanning (it’s almost 2 years after scanning program was launched vs. the limited previews that come direct from the publisher and are also part of Amazon’s Search Inside the Book) vs. the complete scan of a book. I wonder if the same book will be scanned many times? Let’s say Stanford, UW-Madison, and U of Michigan have the same book. Will it be scanned once, twice, three times? If each has different editions will all three be available? Even if this is not the case, will all three versions be accessible?

Yes, the Google press release is clear that the full text
of public domain materials will be completely visible and searchable,

Nevertheless, we’re not sure if the public understands if books in copyright and scanned from a library, the searcher will only see a snippet(s). What is the length of that snippet? Of course, copyright rules will also be different in different countries.

The other day the co-founder of YouTube said:
“Our community has played a vital role in changing the way that people consume media, creating a new clip culture.”

Our we also starting a new book “snippet” culture?

Thanks to SEW Blog for the news tip.

+ Consumer Satisfaction Doesn’t Equal Market Share

+ Yahoo Japan bets on content for cellphones (Reuters)

This entry was posted on Friday, October 13th, 2006 at 12:49 am and is filed under Scholarly Publishing, Web Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.