Mission

The mass digitization of books promises to bring tremendous value to consumers, libraries, scholars, and students. The Open Book Alliance will work to advance and protect this promise. And, by protecting it, we will assert that any mass book digitization and publishing effort be open and competitive. The process of achieving this promise must be undertaken in the open, grounded in sound public policy and mindful of the need to promote long-term benefits for consumers rather than isolated commercial interests.

The Open Book Alliance will counter Google, the Association of American Publishers and the Authors' Guild's scheme to monopolize the access, distribution and pricing of the largest digital database of books in the world. To this end, we will promote fair and flexible solutions aimed at achieving a more robust and open system.

 

Washington DC--The American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) announce the release of "A Guide for the Perplexed Part II: The Amended Google-Michigan Agreement." The amendment represents important additions and this guide provides an overview to help librarians better understand the revised terms.

Washington DC-The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the American Library Association (ALA) have released "A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement," by Jonathan Band, JD.

The guide is designed to help the library community better understand the terms and conditions of the recent settlement agreement between Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers concerning Google's scanning of copyrighted works. Band notes that the settlement is extremely complex and presents significant challenges and opportunities to libraries. The guide outlines and simplifies the settlement's provisions, with special emphasis on the provisions that apply directly to libraries.

 

More on using the Google Book Search cover images

mapping out references to locations in book

google continues to try and take over the world...this time claiming to be trying to increase publisher's revenues - how selfless?