Penn students may have one more powerful research tool at their fingertips this fall -- albeit one that has stirred much controversy and is now fighting to preserve its identity.
The Google Print Library Project began work last October to digitize the collections of the Harvard, Stanford and University of Michigan libraries, as well as those of Oxford University and the New York Public Library. Through the project, users can get publishing information and brief summaries of books, search full text for keywords and phrases and find the book in a store or local library.
However, students hoping to search copyrighted works in library collections will have to wait. In response to mounting criticism from the publishing industry, Google postponed the scanning of copyrighted works on Aug. 12, promising to respect publishers' and authors' desires to withhold or withdraw material. Google plans to resume scanning in November.
But both the Association of American Publishers and the Association of American University Presses refused this gesture, saying that in placing the onus on the publisher or author, Google infringed on copyright law. In a recent Web statement, the AAUP reiterated its previous concerns with the legality of reproducing entire copyrighted books electronically, even if only a few sentences are readable.
"The idea of the Library Project is enormously appealing; it is the way it is being put into practice that is causing such widespread concern," the AAUP Board of Directors wrote.
"Google, an enormously successful company, claims a sweeping right to appropriate the property of others for its own commercial use unless it is told, case by case and instance by instance, not to."
The AAUP is also critical of Google's practice of giving libraries electronic copies of submitted books, which they say might cut down on the number of books bought by research libraries.
As easy as accessing the Google Library Project might be, the complexity of copyright laws makes determining the legality of Google's project anything but.
Marjorie Hassen, assistant director of research and instructional services at Van Pelt Library, praised Google for attempting to make information more accessible but cautioned that the success of the program depends on working with publishers and abiding by the law.
"Basically the law has always stated that if you're copying to avoid purchase it's illegal ... so it's a question of what they're doing with it. This is the part that's making the publishers nervous," she said. "It's intellectual property, but it's also, you know, dollars, and that's what gets everyone upset."
Hassen added that while Google did not ask Penn to participate in the Library Project, she sees them as sharing the same goal of increasing access to knowledge.
"We spend our time figuring out how to make the most [information] available in the easiest way. We want to be involved as much as we can. ... We don't really look at this as a competition issue."
Many Penn students are just as divided in their opinion of the project.
Aman Alexander, a Wharton junior, had not heard of the Google Library Project but said that scanning entire copyrighted books without permission from publishers and authors does encroach on their rights.
"Google's in the wrong ... because they obviously [knew] about copyright issues," he said.
On the other hand, Eric Schwartz, a College sophomore, feels that the concerns of the publishing industry are overblown.
"I think that [the Google Library Project is] great. It's not the whole body as long as the books are cited," he said. "By putting more and more scholarly publishing on the Internet, you're less likely to get Joe Smith's opinion and more likely to get one of a scholar. Whether one should be weighed more than the other, I have no idea. That's the fun of the Internet."
College senior Fatimah Muhammad said she believes that publishers' legal concerns are a mask to try to control public access to published material, but she expressed nostalgia for traditional library research.
"I think it's somewhat ironic because what we're fighting for is access to information. If you're looking for a book, why would you make it difficult, on the one hand. On the other, there's something to be said about the experience of looking up a book and finding it in the library," she said. "It's something typing in a keyword doesn't do."
A virtual library - The concept: Digitizing scholarly works and making them easily searchable - The participants: Stanford, University of Michigan, Harvard, Oxford, and the New York Public Library - The controversy: The publishing industry has criticized the project for infringing on copyright laws, causing Google to postpone its efforts
