Google to add libraries to database

Published: Dec 14, 2004 12:48 a.m. ET

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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Google Inc. is planning to announce on Tuesday an agreement with leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web, according to a report published Tuesday.

The collaboration would include Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Stanford University and the New York Public Library, according to a report in the New York Times online edition.

Google has agreed to underwrite the projects while adding its own technical abilities to scanning and digitizing tens of thousands of pages a day at each library, the Times reported.

Under the proposed agreement, Google will only publish the full texts of those library books old enough to no be longer protected by copyright, the Times reported.

For copyrighted works, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company would scan in the entire text, but make only short excerpts available online.

According to the report, which cited unnamed sources, the cost of the undertaking could be $10 for each of the more than 15 million books and other documents covered in the agreement.

Libraries involved predict the project could take at least a decade, the Times reported.

Google GOOG, -2.62% executives declined to comment to the Times.

According to the report, the agreements are not exclusive and could touch off a race with other major Internet search providers, including Amazon AMZN, -3.19% Microsoft MSFT, -2.91% and Yahoo YHOO .

In addition, each agreement with a library is slightly different, the Times reported.

According to the report, Google plans to digitize nearly all the 8 million books in Stanford's collection and 7 million at Michigan.

For now, the Harvard project will be limited to about 40,000 volumes, and scanning at Bodleian Library at Oxford will be limited to an unspecified number of books published before 1900, the Times reported.

The New York Public Library project will involve fragile material not under copyright that library officials said would be of interest mostly to scholars, the Times reported.

According to the report, the new plan calls for making the library material available as part of Google's regular Web service. Google will sell advertising to generate revenue from its library material.

Each library, in turn will receive its own copy of the digital database created from its institutions holdings, which the library can make available through its own web site, if it chooses, the Times reported.

According to the report, Google digitizing task will involved, at least in the beginning, people placing books and documents on sophisticated scanners, whose high-resolution cameras capture an image of each page and convert it to a digital file.

Books from Stanford will be taken to a copying center established at Google's headquarters while remote scanning operations will be set up at both Michigan and Harvard, the Times reported.

According to the report, Google refused to comment on the technology that it was using to digitize books, except to say it was nondestructive.

According to the report, citing an unnamed person, who has been briefed on the project, Google's technology is more labor-intensive than systems that are already commercially available.

On Monday, Google shares closed down $1.20 to $170.45.

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