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Poster:	stbalbach	Date:	April 15, 2009 09:20:19pm
Forum:	texts	Subject:	Re: Google Books 'Guidelines' Change

Jim,

You may be right about your theory that GB will begin to lock up access to PD works.

Here's an example PD book on Google that was once "Full access" and now "Snippet only" mode:

The American Historical Review, 1920
http://books.google.com/books?id=4JELAAAAIAAJ

Luckily, there is a copy on IA:
http://www.archive.org/details/americanhistoric19191920jame

I happened on this by accident since I linked to it from a Wikipedia article, than later discovered the link no longer worked after Google changed it to Snippet only. If they do this on a larger scale it will break not only Wikipedia but everything that links directly to GB. Obviously it's not a good idea to link to Google Books because it can't be trusted to work, which is ironic, given how their linking algorithm works!

This post was modified by stbalbach on 2009-04-16 04:20:19

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Poster:	Jim Carlile	Date:	April 15, 2009 10:48:38pm
Forum:	texts	Subject:	Re: Google Books 'Guidelines' Change

Yes, that's interesting. Google is scanning loads of journals too, and my 'suspicions' are that they are going to set up a for-profit alternative to JSTOR. The subject of journals and magazines is conspicuously absent from the Agreement-- they refer to them by another generic term, I can't remeber what it was-- yet they are scanning the most obscure of magazines, like house organs from Kodak, etc. that nobody has, from Eastman and other archives.

When I read things from around the Web, I'm amazed at the lack of understanding that even many academic librarians have about this Agreement. Contrary to what so many have been posting, there is nothing about free downloads of PD materials. The controlling language for PD is in the individual agreements with the participating libraries, where the only condition imposed upon Google is view-only.

In the case of some journals, the host archives may not be imposing this open requirement, which is why Google is now restricting the viewing of some PD materials (?) It might be worth checking into.

I've gotten a lot of flack on other sites about why I'm criticizing Google, and I agree, access to these materials is great. But Google has never been in this for the altruism, which is how they sold the host libraries on allowing them to into their books for free.

A quick glance at any of the host agreements with the college libraries-- liberated only by lawsuits from Google Watch and others-- revealed just what was going on with them and their Book program, and this was confirmed by the Agreement itself when it came out.

My pet peeve about all of this-- and apparently, the judge has some questions about it, too-- is just what the host libraries are getting out of the deal?

They give Google all of their books for free, and in return they are given scans that they effectively cannot use for anything. If they want access to the corpus, they have to subscribe just like everyone else! This means that Google is requiring them to buy back their own copyrighted books, if anyone wants to actually use them on or off the campus.

Incidentally, the Agreement requires Google to identify all of the PD works they have scanned, and soon. That includes post-1922 works that were never renewed. It'll be interesting to see what happens when they do, and what kind of access is allowed to them.