Libraries are facing major changes due to new technologies like Google and digitization. While digitization reduces storage and access costs, copyright laws may restrict the sharing of digitized materials. The HathiTrust digital library holds over 10 million volumes but only a small portion are in the public domain. To thrive, libraries will need to revise rights policies to take advantage of technology, redefine their missions around sharing and collaboration, and preserve both digital and physical materials.

1. Libraries in the Age of
Google
Paul N. Courant
Wolverine Caucus
Lansing, MI
17 April 2012

2. Introduction:
Revolutions in the
Library

3. The Library
Image source: UNC School of Information & Library Science

4. What does the
Academic Library do?
Supports scholarship
- Provides relevant information/materials
to students and faculty
- Provides reliable, stable, approximately
permanent access to the scholarly
record and associated source material.
Authentic and secure.
Used to go together, now not so much.

5. Publication and
Scholarship
Ideas must be conveyed to qualify as ideas
Books Polls
Experiments
Statistics
Articles
Reports
And without libraries, that which we know (knew)
gets lost

6. Progress
You can t make it or sustain it without a
library
In fact, you can t do much without a
library*
*I get to define do, much, and
library

7. Sharing
The Library is for Everyone -- Stephen Clark

8. Some economics of
libraries
You are
here

9. What does this mean?
Cost for libraries:
relatively high
Cost for users:
relatively low - Building
- Infrastructure
- Time
- Maintenance
- Research
- Staff
- Travel
- Acquisitions
- And so on...

10. Public Goods
Samuelson on public goods:
Each individual s consumption of that good leads to
no subtraction from any other individual s consumption of
that good.
Jefferson on information:
Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the
less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He
who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself
without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine,
receives light without darkening me.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of
property.

11. Digitization can change it
all
You are
here

12. Annual Cost of Storing a
Book
Open Stack: $4.26
High Density $ .86 (but not as usable)
HathiTrust $ .15 (average)
Big Potential Saving

14. A fact about our world
Except for the most
arcane materials and
users, that which is not
available online will
simply not be read.

15. Copyright

16. The goal of copyright
promote the
Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by securing for
limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive right
to their respective Writings and Discoveries . . .
United States Constitution, Article I
The original requirements for gaining copyright
protection (i.e., registration, publication, & limited scope
and endurance) were more consistent with learning
and promoting access than with promoting property.

17. Copyright

18. The length of copyright
Copyright, the good old days:
14 years 14 years
And you had to register
Copyright today:
Life of the author +70 years
No registration required
(unless you want to sue)

19. Copyrights between 55 and 75 years
old that were still valuable in 1998
Data source:
Congressional Research Service, Copyright Term Extension: Estimating the Economic Values

20. The street value of copyright
Out of print = 95%
Plausibly in copyright: 66.6% Public Domain: 28.4%
Unknown: 5%
UM s print collection: 7.3 million volumes

21. Once upon a time, copying
(aka printing) was
expensive
Now copying is cheap

22. Distributing copies was
expensive
Now, also cheap
The business model no longer
fits the business(es).

23. Cheap copying ought to help
Publication facilitates collaboration,
standing on the shoulders of both giants
and the vertically challenged, which is the
fundamental method
And new information technology greatly
reduces the cost of publication, improving
access across time and space . . . .

24. Google & HathiTrust

25. Google Books Project

26. Google Settlement
Access for our Campus
Public Benefits
- Print Disabilities
- Public Library Kiosks
- Browsing in the Bookstore
Research Corpus
Collection Management

27. Google Settlement
Controversy
Monopoly
Orphan Works
Pipe Dreams of Various Flavors
- Nonprofits should & would have done it
- Should have been public policy
Current state of play

29. What s in HathiTrust?
10,110,821 total volumes
5,372,802 book titles
266,547 serial titles
3,538,787,350 pages
453 terabytes
120 miles
8,215 tons
2,803,202 volumes (~28% of total) in the public domain

30. Language Distribution (1)
The top 10 languages
make up ~86% of all
content.
*As of June 13, 2011
30

31. Language Distribution (2)
The next 40
languages
make up
~13% of all
content.
31 *As of June 13, 2011

32. The Future

33. Challenges
Intellectual property environment
Technology and Scale
Rising journal prices, especially in Science,
Technology and Medicine
Problem of preservation and future access with
licensing
New Responsibilities
- Large data sets
- Web 2.0 (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr,
YouTube)

34. Opportunities
Scholarship benefits from easy sharing
We are the information experts in the
Information Age, and hard problems require
expertise
If we can organize to cover costs, the sky is
the limit
No matter what, Michigan will be a leader

35. What to Do
Revise the rights environment to exploit the technology
Revise individual libraries missions to exploit the
technology
- Sharing and scale
- Local layers on top
- (cataloging as poster child)
Digitize wherever possible, and use digital copies
wherever appropriate and legal
- Information to Artifact continuum
Preserve and curate the old and the new
(Display the treasures)
Create Institutions to Support Collaboration

36. Two Futures

37. Thank you
pnc@umich.edu