According to an article I read in The Chronicle of Higher Education  written by Scott Carlson, Google and the library at the Univeristy of California have joined together to create digitized books.  According to the contract signed by the University, the library will temporarily loan Google 2.5 million of its volumes so that they can be scanned.  Google will initially scan 600 of these books a day, but will eventually work its way up to scanning 3,000 books a day.  Google promises to return any books pulled for scanning back to the library within 15 days.  Google plans on scanning these books for free.  Google and the university will receive copies of the digital books, however the university has some restrictions.  The university cannot share or sell its newly digitized books with any other library.  Google has also partnered with other universities and they too cannot share or sell any of their digitized books with other libraries.

So what does this mean? Google has a lot of POWER!  These libraries are desperate to get books digitized and they are willing to let Google do it.  They would be crazy not to.  It is free and Google can digitize 3000 books a day!  However, what does Google plan to do with all of these digitized books in the future?  Sell them to libraries for a fee?  Sell them to online users for  a fee?  They will be the only company that has access to a comprehensive library of digitized books.  Some people have predicted that Google will “own” the virtual world someday and because of that some univeristy librarians are urging other librarians to push Google to release their future plans for the digitized books.  These librarians want to know Google’s plans before they release any more books for digitilization. 

Will Google share their plans?  My guess is no.  They have enough libraries willing to loan books that they don’t have to tell anything they don’t want to.  I’m guessing that whatever Google is up to will make them a large profit in the long run.  They always seem to come out on top.

Name of article:  U. of California Will Provide Up to 3,000 Books a Day to Google for Scanning, Contract States

http://chronicle.com/free/2006/08/2006082501t.htm