Using strong rhetoric, University President Mary Sue Coleman reaffirmed her support for the controversial Google Book Search project yesterday. And she did it in front of an audience that is hostile to the project – the American Association of Publishers.
Google aims to copy every volume in the University’s libraries along with those of several other libraries, and make the texts searchable online.
At the association’s conference in Washington, Coleman said Google Book Search is crucial because it preserves books that might otherwise be destroyed or ruined and because it makes information accessible worldwide.
“We are obligated to take the resources of the library to the Internet,” Coleman said. “When people turn to the Internet for information, I want Michigan’s great library to be there for them to discover.”
Digitizing the entire University library marks a step forward for scholarship because it embraces the modern technology preferred by today’s generation of college students, Coleman said.
“Search engines have genuinely reshaped our world,” Coleman said. “When students do research, they use the Internet for digitized library resources more than they use the library proper.”
Five of the AAP’s member companies filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against Google last fall.
Coleman said despite the University’s commitment to digitization, it will continue buying books at the usual rate and its print libraries will retain their importance.
“Since people will have a greater ability to find what they want, I think this will widen use of libraries rather than limit them,” Coleman told The Michigan Daily after her speech.
The primary function of digitization is the preservation of books whose content could otherwise be lost forever, Coleman said.
A fourth of the University’s books are “brittle,” she said, and many are printed on acidic paper that will eventually degrade.
Digitization also protects against the possibility of disasters, Coleman said. She cited Hurricane Katrina, which sank Tulane University’s primary library in 9 feet of water, and the Khmer Rouge regime, which destroyed 80 percent of the Cambodian National Library’s volumes in the 1970s.
In spite of the benefits of digitization, Google’s decision to copy the University’s 7 million volumes for the Google Book Search website has been criticized because of the revenue Google gains from it.
The company only excerpts copyrighted books – it doesn’t release their full text. But critics are angry because the company sells advertising on the website. Groups like the AAP accuse Google of profiting from copyrighted material without the permission of the author.
Coleman said the website benefits publishing companies because it stimulates book sales.
“I can’t understand why any bookseller or publisher, especially scholarly presses with such narrow audiences, would oppose an approach that all but guarantees increased exposure,” Coleman said.
The project will bring information to people who have no access to comprehensive libraries like the University’s. Coleman cited the example of the University of Liberia, with its limited and poorly maintained collection. The library’s three Internet-enabled computers would give it access to far more volumes than the students could previously obtain for research, she said.
“Google Book Search, with the books of the University of Michigan, makes all that possible,” Coleman said. “It takes the corpus of human knowledge and puts it in the hands of anyone who wants it.”
Click here for the complete transcript of Coleman’s speech.
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