Harvard Library - Credit: samirluther on Flickr (CC BY-SA)
Harvard has decided to terminate their relationship with Google Booksearch because the terms of Google’s recent settlement with publishers.
Harvard’s concerns center on access to the scanned texts — how widely available access would be and how much it might cost. “As we understand it, the settlement contains too many potential limitations on access to and use of the books by members of the higher-education community and by patrons of public libraries,” Harvard’s university-library director, Robert C. Darnton, wrote in a letter to the library staff.
He noted that “the settlement provides no assurance that the prices charged for access will be reasonable, especially since the subscription services will have no real competitors [and] the scope of access to the digitized books is in various ways both limited and uncertain.” He also expressed concern about the quality of the scanned books, which “in many cases will be missing photographs, illustrations, and other pictorial works, which will reduce their utility for research.”
Thanks for leading the way Harvard. It’s nice to see an entity that can afford to take the hits, do it.