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Web Nuggets: Google's new book search deal

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    The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google today announced a groundbreaking settlement agreement on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide that would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the U.S. from the collections of a number of major U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search.

    ...

    The agreement promises to benefit readers and researchers, and enhance the ability of authors and publishers to distribute their content in digital form, by significantly expanding online access to works through Google Book Search, an ambitious effort to make millions of books searchable via the Web.


    Authors, Publishers, and Google Reach Landmark Settlement
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    Wow. That's heavy.

    As a Google fanatic, I'm stoked, because something like this is always what I've wanted, a way for essentially all information to be accessible, and quickly. Lord knows there are far too many instances of me trying to remember something from a particular book and never being able to find it again without reading the whole thing from scratch.

    But that's a more personal interest. I'm sure the practical applications outweigh my own needs immensely. Imagine all the educational applications.
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      CommentAuthoroutlawpoet
    • CommentTimeOct 28th 2008
     (4007.3)
    if it can be made reliable, someone could make a low-cost version of the Kindle with free/open content using the interface/API, which could be really cool.
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    I've really gotten into using Google books search this last week; it's great for searching folklore encyclopedias.

    @Mark Seifert, is Avatar going to get in on this? I'm very curious if comics publishers are including TPBs...
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    It's an interesting development. Very early days in this new situation, obviously. We'd have to unravel how this is supposed to work, how the class action settlement does or doesn't affect us, and more importantly, discuss it with authors we work with, before we could talk about participation. I had some more thoughts written up here but the fact is I'm not legalbrained enough to confidently parse some of the stuff I'm seeing on google's official website on the matter and in the settlement proposal (pdf). There's some good info at those links, though, as well as the Authors Guild's take on the matter, and the Association of American Publisher's comments.
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    This is a dream for researchers. Can find some obscure out-of-print book and nobody shares with your local library? Just buy a Google copy.

    Of course, I’m more interested in seeing the entire Library of Congress online, but I think that’s going to take a while.
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      CommentAuthorMark Seifert
    • CommentTimeOct 28th 2008 edited
     (4007.7)
    Worth noting that they do have trades in google books already, just basic info and in many cases covers, as far as I can see, no previews, but the skeleton info is there in many cases:

    http://books.google.com/books?q=warren+ellis+avatar&btnG=Search+Books

    Forgot about that, I noticed it when I was looking at the google library feature in relation to friendfeed.
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    I wonder if it will extend to the Internet Archive as well. I hope Google and the IA start working together - they've kind of been butting heads about how to go about things. There's a great This Week In Law episode on it, within the last few.

    And as always, hooray for TED:
    digital library, available to all

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