Open Access News

Mr. [Sidney] Verba is overseeing [Harvard's] partnership with Google, which plans to create searchable digital copies of entire collections - tens of millions of books - at five leading research libraries....For Mr. Verba, the decision to support Google's plan was not easy or obvious. He has a unique perspective on the legal and intellectual debate because his various professional roles connect him to every aspect of the creation and use of books. "It's been dominating my life for the last year and a half," said Mr. Verba, a prominent political scientist who has been a professor at Harvard for more than 30 years. Even now, he is cautious about the implications of the ambitious project. Until two years ago, the congenial and energetic Mr. Verba was chairman of the board of Harvard University Press. And in that position, he witnessed mounting anxiety about the future of publishing, especially with the advent of digital texts. "Scanning the whole text makes publishers very nervous," he said. "I have sympathy with that. They have to be assured there will be security, that no one will hack in and steal contents, or sell it to someone." And as the author or co-author of 18 books, he understands the worry that Google's digitization project might cause writers over loss of income or control of their work. Many of his own books are still in print. But as a librarian and a teacher, he argues that the digital project will meet the needs of students who gravitate to the Internet - and Google in particular - to conduct their research. And he says he believes the project will aid the library's broader mission to preserve academic material and make it accessible to the world. He was taken aback when Google was sued, first in September by a group of authors, then last month by five major publishers. "It's become much more controversial than I would have expected," Mr. Verba said. "I was surprised by the vehemence." For the time being, Harvard has confined the scanning of its collections largely to books in the public domain and limited the initial scanning to about 40,000 volumes. But it hopes eventually to scan copyrighted books as well, depending on the outcome of the legal dispute. "The thing that consoles me," Mr. Verba said, "is Google's notion of showing only the snippets, which have everything to do with what's in the book, but nothing to do with reading the book."...[After hearing Verba's initial concerns] Google did return, some nine months later, details in hand. "It was clear they had done their homework," said Mr. Verba, who was careful not to talk about parts of the project that fall under a nondisclosure agreement. "They had designed a very efficient means of doing the digitization, in a nondamaging, cost-efficient way. And they were willing to invest a large amount of money."..."It's a fascinating time, and very confusing," Mr. Verba said of the copyright controversy. "And if you ask me if I have a clear view of fair use, the answer is no. It's all up in the air." Another concern for the plaintiffs in the lawsuits is the second digital copy that Google gives to the libraries as part of each agreement. But Mr. Verba maintains that those second copies will be used only for archiving and preservation, in keeping with a research library's charter. "We think and hope it is legally the appropriate approach," Mr. Verba said of the Google project. "But we're taking it day by day."