Digital Libraries

Google and others are racing to create enormous digital libraries.  Google may alienate authors and publishers for digitizing books still subject to copyright.   Google's library project styled "Google Book Search" plans to digitize books form collections of libraries such as the New York Public Library plus university libraries such as Harvard, Oxford, Stanford and Michigan.  Google's efforts have been met with serious opposition through copyright litigation.

Other groups such as Open Content Alliance are focused upon books that are free from copyright restrictions, in other words books in the public domain.   In other words, in 2005, this applies to any books published before 1923. A major goal of the Open Content Alliance is to provide free digital access to works in the public domain.  Many publishers, libraries and organizations, including the Smithsonian, Johns Hopkins and University of Toronto have joined this effort.

In the Google project, only portions of books may be viewed so that the issue of fair use is raised.  Google believes that there is no obligation to seek copyright owners' permissions on the basis of the fair use theory.  Obviously, publishers are concerned about losses due to piracy.

Other companies such as Amazon may provide fee-based online viewing of books.

All of these efforts will have broad reaching impact because interest research is a far more popular vehicle than library research because its ease of use.  The various players are analyzing their positions from legal and business viewpoints.  There have been discussions regarding the possibility of combining forces, but the final decision remains uncertain.

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