Legal Research

UW Madison Expands Agreement with Google Books

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has expanded its agreement with Google to digitize books from UW-Madison's collection and make them available online.

From a press release issued this morning:

The expanded partnership, completed on July 8, 2009, enables the university to broaden public access to its collection in new ways, made possible by the settlement Google signed with a broad class of authors and publishers last year.

"Our original project with Google was undertaken in the spirit of the Wisconsin Idea--UW's commitment to making useful information and knowledge available beyond the confines of the university," says Ken Frazier, director of Libraries. "Now, our new agreement will promote equitable access to knowledge even further, by giving every student in the U.S. access to the same books, whether they're on campus or not."...

Through Google's pending settlement with authors and publishers and the new agreement with UW-Madison, readers and researchers will be able to preview portions of UW-Madison's in-copyright and out-of-print books for free and buy online access to the full texts of such books.

In addition, universities, colleges, and public libraries throughout the U.S. will be able to offer their students and patrons access to UW-Madison's rich collections through institutional subscriptions to the books contained in the institutional subscription database. Every public and university library in the U.S. will be able to receive one free public access license to provide free, full-text online viewing of millions of out-of-print books at designated computers in each of their buildings.

Full post as published by WisBlawg - From the UW Law Library on July 09, 2009 (boomark / email).