[bksvol-discuss] Re: Public domain books (Was Google Books)
- From: <Jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2008 16:45:01 -0700
Ann: sent your email directly to our collections folks to think about.
Monica: Need to clarify.
My impression of Google Books are that there are three kinds of books
there: the interesting, the boring and the very boring! The public
domain books are very boring and the biggest Google Books collection:
millions of titles, and not a lot of demand. The oft-named "orphan
works" are those that are still in copyright but are out of print.
These are the books that Google and the publishers are fighting about in
court. And, current in-print copyrighted books are generally the most
interesting books. Google (I believe) won't do these interesting books
without permission.
When Google Books presents a title in the public domain, the screen
reader user can read the full text as OCR'd. The copyrighted books show
only snippets: not the entire book.
Since the interesting books are wholly within the control of the
publishers, we're working on them directly. The boring books (in
copyright, out of print) are where there is a court fight going on, so
we're avoiding those for now. And, the very boring books, we can do
those whenever, if someone cares.
Jim
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